t do
you want me to do?"

"To take me to him. I want to see him with my own eyes."

"To go yourself?" says Sir James, extreme disapprobation in his tone.
"You must be out of your mind."

"I am not," returns she, indignantly. "I never was more in it. And I
am going, any-way."

"What will your father say?"

"He will say I was quite right. Dear, _dear_, DEAR Jim,"--slipping her
hand through his arm, and basely descending from _hauteur_ to
coaxing,--"do say you will take me to him. It can't be wrong! Am I not
going to be his wife in a month's time?"

Sir James moves a chair out of his way with most unnecessary
vehemence.

"How that alters the case I can't see," he says, obstinately.

"You forsake me!" says Miss Peyton, her eyes filling with tears. "Do.
I can't be much unhappier than I am, but I did depend on you, you were
always so much my friend." Here two large tears run down her cheeks,
and they, of course, decide everything.

"I will take you," he says, hastily. "To-day?--The sooner the better,
I suppose."

"Yes; by the next train. Oh, how obliged to you I am! Dear Jim, I
shall never forget it to you!"

This is supposed to be grateful to him, but it is quite the reverse.

"I think you are very foolish to go at all," he says, somewhat
gruffly.

"Perhaps I am," she says, with a rueful glance. "But you cannot
understand. Ah! if you loved, yourself, you could sympathize with me."

"Could I?" says Sir James, with a grimace that is meant for a smile,
but as such is a most startling specimen of its class.

So they go up to town, and presently arrive at the house where Horace
lies unconscious of all around him. The door is opened to them by an
unmistakable landlady,--a fat, indolent person, with sleepy eyes, and
a large mouth, and a general air about her suggestive of perpetual
beef-steaks and bottled stout.

This portly dame, on being questioned, tells them, "Mr. Branscum has
just bin given his draft, and now he is snoozin' away as peaceable as
a hinfant, bless 'im."

"Is he--in bed?" asks Sir James, diffidently, this large person having
the power to reduce him to utter subjection.

"Lawks! no, sir. He wouldn't stay there he's that contrairy. Beggin'
yore parding, sir, he's yore brother?"

Sir James nods. She may prove difficult, this stout old lady, if he
declares himself no relative.

"To be shore!" says she. "I might 'a' knowed by the speakin' likeness
between you. You're the born himage of 'im.