f. I could pick up the coach in the morning
(he said). But this I declined, professing that I preferred the
night for travelling, and maybe, before tiring myself, would
overtake one of Russell's waggons and obtain a lift; the fact being
that, grateful though I found it to sit and converse with him, my
conscience was accusing me all the while.

"Towards the end of our talk he had let slip by accident that he was
by no means a rich man. The money from that moment began to burn in
my pockets, and I had scarcely shaken hands with him and taken my
leave--which I did just as the sun was sinking behind the plantation
across the lane--before his guineas fairly scorched me. I held on my
way for a mile or more. You may have observed, ladies, that I limp
in my walk? It is the effect of an old wound. But, I declare to
you, my limp was nothing to the thought I dragged with me--the
recollection of the Major's face and the expression that had come
over it when I had first confessed my errand. All his subsequent
kindness, his sympathy, his hospitality, his frank and easy talk,
could not wipe out that recollection. I had sold something which for
years it had been my pride to keep. I had forced it on an unwilling
buyer. I had taken the money of a poor man, and had given him in
exchange--what? You remember, ladies, those words of Shakespeare--
good words, although he puts them into the mouth of a villain--that:

"' . . . He who filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.'

"No one had filched my honour--I had sold it to a good man, but yet
without enriching him, while in the loss of it I knew myself poor
indeed. At the second milestone I turned back, more eager now to
find the Major and get rid of the money than ever I had been to
obtain it.

"My face was no sooner turned again towards the cottage than I broke
into a run, and so good pace I made between running and walking that
it cannot have been more than an hour from my leaving the garden
before I arrived back at the head of the lane. The evening was
dusking in, but by no means dark as yet, even though a dark cloud had
crept up from the west and overhung the plantation to the right.
I looked down the lane as I entered it, and again--yes, ladies, as
surely as before--I saw a man cross it from the garden gate and step
into the plantation!

"Who the man was I could not tell, the light being so uncertai