artment.
In her examination hitherto she had not found such a letter as Mr.
Pittman had described--perhaps there might be more letters behind this
slide. She pushed it back at once, and saw--no letters, but a small
spirit-decanter, half full of pale brandy, Dempster's habitual drink.

An impetuous desire shook Janet through all her members; it seemed to
master her with the inevitable force of strong fumes that flood our
senses before we are aware. Her hand was on the decanter: pale and
excited, she was lifting it out of its niche, when, with a start and a
shudder, she dashed it to the ground, and the room was filled with the
odour of the spirit. Without staying to shut up the bureau, she rushed
out of the room, snatched up her bonnet and mantle which lay in the
dining-room, and hurried out of the house.

Where should she go? In what place would this demon that had re-entered
her be scared back again? She walks rapidly along the street in the
direction of the church. She is soon at the gate of the churchyard; she
passes through it, and makes her way across the graves to a spot she
knows--a spot where the turf was stirred not long ago, where a tomb is to
be erected soon. It is very near the church wall, on the side which now
lies in deep shadow, quite shut out from the rays of the westering sun by
a projecting buttress.

Janet sat down on the ground. It was a sombre spot. A thick hedge,
surmounted by elm-trees, was in front of her; a projecting buttress on
each side. But she wanted to shut out even these objects. Her thick crape
veil was down; but she closed her eyes behind it, and pressed her hands
upon them. She wanted to summon up the vision of the past; she wanted to
lash the demon out of her soul with the stinging memories of the bygone
misery; she wanted to renew the old horror and the old anguish, that she
might throw herself with the more desperate clinging energy at the foot
of the cross, where the Divine Sufferer would impart divine strength. She
tried to recall those first bitter moments of shame, which were like the
shuddering discovery of the leper that the dire taint is upon him; the
deeper and deeper lapse; the on-coming of settled despair; the awful
moments by the bedside of her self-maddened husband. And then she tried
to live through, with a remembrance made more vivid by that contrast, the
blessed hours of hope and joy and peace that had come to her of late,
since her whole soul had been bent towards