not really suppose--no,
no; he said he did not ask anything. He told me because I asked. Poor
darling father!"

And with something very like a sob she hurried on to Yeld.

She went straight to Dr Brandram's.

"Well, my dear young lady, it does one good to see you back," said he;
"but bless me, how pale you look."

"Do I? I'm quite well, thank you. Dr Brandram," said she, "do you
know anything about this Mr Ratman?"

The Doctor stared at this abrupt inquiry.

"Nothing more than you and every one else does--that he is a rank
impostor!"

"I don't mean that. I mean, where is he? I want to see him very much."

"You want to see him? He has vanished, and left no track. Is it
nothing I can help you in?"

"No," said she, looking very miserable. "I hoped you could have told me
where to find him. Good-bye, and thank you."

She departed, leaving the doctor sorely disturbed and bewildered. He
stood watching her slight figure till it disappeared in the Vicarage
garden, and then shrugging his shoulders, said, "Something wrong,
somewhere. Evidently not a case for me to be trusted with. It's about
time Armstrong came home."

Whereupon he walked over to the post office and dispatched the telegram
which, as the reader knows, procured Tom Oliphant the unspeakable
pleasure of a game of football on the following afternoon.

"Well," said the tutor to his friend in the doctor's parlour that
evening, "what's all this about?"

"That's what I'm not likely to know myself," said the doctor; and he
narrated the circumstances of Miss Oliphant's mysterious call.

"Humph!" said the tutor. "She wants to see him in his capacity of
Robert Ratman, evidently, and not of Roger Ingleton, major."

"So it seemed to me."

"And you say she had just come from visiting her father at Maxfield?"

"Yes."

"On the principle that two and two make four, I suppose we may conclude
that my co-trustee is on toast at present," said the tutor.

"And further, that that co-trustee being somebody's father, you are the
man to get him off it."

The tutor's face clouded, and his glass dropped with a twang from his
eye.

"Don't make that mistake again, Brandram--unless," and here his lips
relaxed into a quiet smile, "you mean by somebody, Miss Jill."

Dr Brandram read a good deal in this short sentence, and, like a good
friend, let the subject drop.

"As Tom has gone to the Rectory to dinner," said the tutor, "I take it
the neighbourhood f