et him where there's not a soul likely to be
about, right down in one of the hop-gardens.' He wouldn't ever dream o'
taking a loaded revolver with him and shoot you, so as to be able to
enter to the property and be Sir Mark--not him!"

Dick remained silent, but his fingers were tearing impatiently at the
bed-clothes.

"He wouldn't say to himself, `I'll delude him down into a place like
that and give him one pill.' And no one would ever say he was a likely
gentleman to think of sticking the pistol in your hand so as to make it
seem, when you were found by the hop-pickers, that you had done it
yourself."

Dick drew a long deep breath, and Jerry went on.

"I'm getting too wicked altogether. Soldiering's pysoning my morals--
there's no mistake about it. You see how I get thinking all kinds of
bad about as mild and pleasant a gentleman as ever was born to be a
comfort to people."

"Hold your tongue!" said Dick hoarsely. "Look here, Jerry, you don't
think it possible that my cousin could have planned all that?"

"Think it possible!" cried Jerry contemptuously; "why, I'm sure of it.
He was getting desperate; and how you could go on looking at it all in
such a hinnercent way caps me. Why, a child could see through it all,
and so could you, only you wouldn't. You knew it was just as I said,
now didn't you?"

"I tried not to, Jerry, but it would take that shape."

"Of course it would, because there was no other shape for it to take.
Officers wear swords, but they don't go out walking in plain clothes
with six-shooters in their pockets, to take aim at their cousins in
lonely places. Well, he made a mistake this time, and so he'll find."

But Mark Frayne was not heard of again for years, when someone brought
news of having seen him far up the country in Queensland; but it might
only have been a rumour, after all.

This was long after Sir Richard Frayne's promotion to captain in the
regiment which he joined in India; for when he had fully recovered from
the wound which brought him within an inch of death--the fever caused by
the exposure playing its part--he went through a course of study and
received his commission. While he remained in England, many were the
pleasant weeks he spent with his friends the Laceys, and many the
poorly-played duets that followed on the flutes.

There was no difficulty about the resumption of the title, and though
the estate had been sorely plundered by the reckless spendthrift and