et one day at the covert side, Jim rode
up to the honourable gentleman and asked him what he had done with
Susan Meynell. Those that saw the meeting say that Montagu Kingdon
turned as white as a ghost when he saw Jim Halliday riding up to him on
his big, raw-boned horse; but nothing came of the quarrel. Mr. Kingdon
did not live many years to enjoy the money his frizzy-haired
West-Indian lady brought him. He died before his brother, Lord
Durnsville, and left neither chick nor child to inherit his money, nor
yet the Durnsville title, which was extinct on the death of the
viscount."

"And what of the poor girl?"

"Ay, poor lass, what of her? It was fourteen years after she left her
home before her sister got so much as a line to say she was in the land
of the living. When a letter did come at last, it was a very melancholy
one. The poor creature wrote to her sister to say she was in London,
alone and penniless, and, as she thought, dying."

"And the sister went to her?"

I remembered that deprecating sentence in the family Bible, written in
a woman's hand.

"That she did, good honest soul, as fast as she could travel, carrying
a full purse along with her. She found poor Susan at an inn near
Aldersgate-street--the old quarter, you see, that she'd known in her
young days. Mrs. Halliday meant to have brought the poor soul back to
Yorkshire, and had settled it all with Jim; but it was too late for
anything of that kind. She found Susan dying, wandering in her mind off
and on, but just able to recognise her sister, and to ask forgiveness
for having trusted to Montagu Kingdon, instead of taking counsel from
those that wished her well."

"Was that all?" I asked presently.

Mr. Mercer made long pauses in the course of his narrative, during
which we walked briskly on; he pondering on those past events, I
languishing for further information.

"Well, lad, that was about all. Where Susan had been in all those
years, or what she had been doing, was more than Mrs. Halliday could
find out. Of late she had been living somewhere abroad. The clothes she
had last worn were of foreign make, very poor and threadbare; and there
was one little box in her room at the inn that had been made at Rouen,
for the name of a Rouen trunkmaker was on the inside of the lid. There
were no letters or papers of any kind in the box; so you see there was
no way of finding out what the poor creature's life had been. All her
sister could do was to stay