ed himself highly
satisfied. Some days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the
horse, behaved in a strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last
became positively fiendish. Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at
headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched
head-first over a declivity. When I found Marmaduke blood was at his
mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere.

"Marmaduke, Marmaduke!" I cried. "Speak! Speak, if it be but a single
word! Great heaven, he is dead!"

"Dead! No, not he," answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear. "The
devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!"

"Woman," cried I, for it was an old gypsy, who had somehow transported
herself to the spot, "for God's sake go for help! There is a house
yonder amongst the trees."

"And why should I stir a foot," replied she fiercely, "for the child of
a race that has ever treated me and mine as dogs?"

Then she cursed Sir Massingberd as the oppressor of her kith and kin,
concluding with the terrible words, "May he perish, inch by inch, within
reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him
into His hand!"

"If you hate Sir Massingberd Heath," said I despairingly, "and want to
do him the worst service that lies in your power, flee, flee to that
house, and bid them save this boy's life, which alone stands between his
beggared uncle and unknown riches!"

Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. She knelt at his
side, from a pocket produced a spirit-flask in a leathern case, and
applied it to his lips. After a painful attempt to swallow, he
succeeded; his eyelids began tremulously to move, and the colour to
return to his pallid cheeks. She disappeared; during her absence I noted
that the tarnished silver top of the flask bore upon it a facsimile of
one of the identical griffins which guarded each side of the broad steps
that led to Fairburn Hall.

After a short interval, a young and lovely girl appeared, accompanied by
a groom and butler, who bore between them a small sofa, on which
Marmaduke was lifted and gently carried to the house. The master came in
soon, accompanied by the local doctor, who at last delivered the verdict
that my friend "would live to be a baronet."

He said, moreover, that the youth must be kept perfectly quiet, and not
moved thence on any consideration--it might be for weeks. Harvey Gerard,
a noble-looking gentleman, refused to admit