ing power. There was a new fever in my mind. The simple plan
of the future which I had mapped out for myself was suddenly shattered.
The Charlotte of to-night--heiress-at-law to an enormous fortune--ward
in Chancery--claimant against the Crown--was a very different person
from the simple maid "whom there were none"--or only a doating
simpleton in the person of the present writer--"to praise, and very few
to love."

The night before last I had hoped so much; to-night hope had forsaken
me. It seemed as if a Titan's hand had dug a great pit between me and
the woman I loved--a pit as deep as the grave.

Philip Sheldon might have consented to give me his stepdaughter
unpossessed of a sixpence; but would he give me his stepdaughter with a
hundred thousand pounds for her fortune? Alas! no; I know the
Sheldonian intellect too well to be fooled by any hope so wild and
baseless. The one bright dream of my misused life faded from me in the
hour in which I discovered my dearest girl's claim to the Haygarthian
inheritance. But I am not going to throw up the sponge before the fight
is over. Time enough to die when I am lying face downward in the
ensanguined mire, and feel the hosts of the foemen trampling above my
shattered carcass. I will live in the light of my Charlotte's smiles
while I can, and for the rest--"_Il ne faut pas dire, fontaine, je ne
boirai pas de ton eau_." There is no cup so bitter that a man dare say,
I will not drain it to the very dregs. "What must be, shall be--that's
a certain text;" and in the mean time _carpe diem_. I am all a Bohemian
again.

_Nov. 5th_. After a day's delay I have obtained my tracing-paper, and
made two tracings of the entries in the Meynell Bible, How intercourse
with the Sheldonian race inclines one to the duplication of documents!
I consider the copying-press of modern civilization the supreme
incarnation of man's distrust of his fellow-men.

I spent this afternoon and evening with my dear love--my last evening
in Yorkshire. To-morrow I shall see my Sheldon, and inform him of the
very strange termination which has come to my researches. Will he
communicate at once with his brother? Will he release me from my oath
of secrecy? There is nothing of the masonic secretiveness in my
organisation, and I am very weary of the seal that has been set upon my
unwary lips. Will Charlotte be told that she is the reverend
intestate's next of kin? These are questions which I ask myself as I
sit in t