uld he have
thought of leaving Mardykes at all if it had not been for his kinsman's
severity? Nay, was it not certain that if Sir Bale had done as Hugh
Creswell had urged him, and sent for Feltram forthwith, and told him how
all had been cleared up, and been a little friendly with him, he would
have found him still in the house?--for he had not yet gone for ten
minutes after Creswell's departure, and thus, all that was to follow
might have been averted. But it was too late now, and Sir Bale would let
the affair take its own course.

Below him, outside the window at which he stood ruminating, he heard
voices mingling with the storm. He could with tolerable certainty
perceive, looking into the obscurity, that there were three men passing
close under it, carrying some very heavy burden among them.

He did not know what these three black figures in the obscurity were
about. He saw them pass round the corner of the building toward the
front, and in the lulls of the storm could hear their gruff voices
talking.

We have all experienced what a presentiment is, and we all know with
what an intuition the faculty of observation is sometimes heightened. It
was such an apprehension as sometimes gives its peculiar horror to a
dream--a sort of knowledge that what those people were about was in a
dreadful way connected with his own fate.

He watched for a time, thinking that they might return; but they did
not. He was in a state of uncomfortable suspense.

"If they want me, they won't have much trouble in finding me, nor any
scruple, egad, in plaguing me; they never have."

Sir Bale returned to his letters, a score of which he was that night
getting off his conscience--an arrear which would not have troubled him
had he not ceased, for two or three days, altogether to employ Philip
Feltram, who had been accustomed to take all that sort of drudgery off
his hands.

All the time he was writing now he had a feeling that the shadows he had
seen pass under his window were machinating some trouble for him, and an
uneasy suspense made him lift his eyes now and then to the door,
fancying sounds and footsteps; and after a resultless wait he would say
to himself, "If any one is coming, why the devil don't he come?" and
then he would apply himself again to his letters.

But on a sudden he heard good Mrs. Julaper's step trotting along the
lobby, and the tiny ringing of her keys.

Here was news coming; and the Baronet stood up looking at t