e knows. For
he was found next morning on the level-crossing after the down
express had passed.

You never saw such a fuss as every one made of me and James
afterwards. I might have been a queen and him a king. But when it
was all over it stuck in my mind that he oughtn't to have doubted
me, and so I wouldn't name the day for over a year, though Mrs.
Oliver had bought him a nice little hotel and given it to him
herself; but when the year was up, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver came down to
stay again, and seeing them brought it all back, and his having
tried to save me as he had seemed more than his having doubted me.
And so I married him, and I don't think any one ever made a better
match. James says he made a better match, and if I don't agree with
him, it's only right and proper that he should think so, and I thank
God that he does every hour of my life.

SON AND HEIR

SIR JASPER was always the best of masters to me and to all of us;
and he had that kind of way with him, masterful and gentle at the
same time, like as if he was kind to you for his own pleasure, and
ordering you about for your own good, that I believe any of us would
have cut our hand off at the wrist if he had told us to.

Lady Breynton had been dead this many a year. She hadn't come to her
husband with her hands empty. They say that Sir Jasper had been very
wild in his youth, and that my Lady's money had come in very handy
to pull the old place together again. She worshipped the ground Sir
Jasper walked on, as most women did that he ever said a kind word
to. But it never seemed to me that he took to her as much as you
might have expected a warm-hearted gentleman like him to do. But he
took to her baby wonderful. I was nurse to that baby from the first,
and a fine handsome little chap he was, and when my Lady died he was
wholly given over to my care. And I loved the child; indeed, I did
love him, and should have loved him to the end but for one thing,
and that comes in its own place in my story. But even those who
loved young Jasper best couldn't help seeing he hadn't his father's
winning ways. And when he grew up to man's estate, he was as wild as
his father had been before him. But his wild ways were the ways that
make young men enemies, not friends, and out of all that came to the
house, for the hunting, or the shooting, or what not, I used to
think there wasn't one would have held out a hand to my young master
if he had been in want of it. And y