ed
him. It was even likely that he had only thrown out his threat for the
sake of terrifying his wife, and was now far beyond the limits of the
parish. So great was the relief she felt after she had talked with the
vicar that she almost ceased to believe there was any danger at all;
looking at it in the light of her present mood, she almost wondered why
she had thought it necessary to tell Mr. Ambrose--until suddenly a vision
of her friend the squire, attacked and perhaps killed, in his own park,
rose to her mental vision, and she remembered what agonies of fear she
had felt for him until she had sent for the vicar. The latter indeed
seemed to have been a sort of _deus ex maohina_ by whom she suddenly
obtained peace of mind and a sense of security in the hour of her
greatest distress.

All that afternoon she lay upon her bed, while Nellie sat beside her and
read to her, and stroked her hands; for Nellie was in reality
passionately fond of her mother and suffered almost as much at the sight
of her suffering as she could have done had she been in pain herself.
Both Mrs. Goddard and the child started at the sound of Stamboul's
baying, which was unlike anything they had ever heard before, and Nellie
ran to the window.

"It is only Mr. Juxon and Stamboul having a game," said Nellie. "What a
noise he made, though! Did not he?"

Poor Nellie--had she had any idea of what the "game" was from which the
squire found it so hard to make his hound desist, she must have gone
almost mad with horror. For the game was her own father, poor child. But
she came back and sat beside her mother utterly unconscious of what might
have happened if Stamboul had once got beyond earshot, galloping along
the trail towards the disused vault at the back of the church. Mrs.
Goddard had started at the sounds and had put her hand to her forehead,
but Nellie's explanation was enough to quiet her, and she smiled faintly
and closed her eyes again. Then, half an hour later, Mrs. Ambrose came,
and would not be denied. She wanted to make Mrs. Goddard comfortable, she
said, when she found she was ill, and she did her best, being a kind and
motherly woman when not hardened by the presence of strangers. She told
her that John was coming on the next day, speaking with vast pride of his
success and omitting to look sternly at Mrs. Goddard as she had formerly
been accustomed to do when she spoke of the young scholar. Then at last
she went away, after exacting a pr