evere to admit of an
easy recovery. Every step was misery and pain; and so, in spite of
himself, he was forced to stop. But he dared not rest in any place
along the road-side; for the terror of Obed Chute was still strong
upon him, and he did not know but that this monster might still take
it into his head to pursue him, so as to exact a larger vengeance. So
he clambered up a bank on the roadside, where some trees were, and
among these he lay down, concealing himself from view.

Pain and terror and dark apprehensions of further danger affected his
brain. Concealed among these trees, he lay motionless, hardly daring
to breathe, and scarcely able to move. Amidst his pain there still
came to him a vague wonder at the presence of Obed Chute here in such
close friendship with Lord Chetwynde. How had such a friendship
arisen? How was it possible that these two had ever become
acquainted? Lord Chetwynde, who had passed his later life in India,
could scarcely ever have heard of this man; and even if he had heard
of this man, his connection with the Chetwynde family had been of
such a nature that an intimate friendship like this was the last
thing which might be expected. Such a friendship, unaccountable as it
might be, between these two, certainly existed, for he had seen
sufficient proofs of it; yet what Lord Chetwynde's aims were he
could not tell. It seemed as though, by some singular freak of
fortune, he had fallen in love with Obed Chute's wife, and was having
clandestine meetings with her somewhere. If so, Obed Chute was the
very man to whom Hilda might reveal her knowledge, with the assurance
that the most ample vengeance would be exacted by him on the
destroyer of his peace and the violator of his friendship.

Amidst his pain, and in spite of it, these thoughts came, and others
also. He could not help wondering whether in this close association
of these two they had not some one common purpose. Was it possible
that they could know any thing about Hilda? This was his first
thought; and nothing could show more plainly the unselfish nature of
the love of this base man than that at a time like this he should
think of her rather than himself. Yet so it was. His thought was, Do
they suspect _her_? Has Lord Chetwynde some dark design against her,
and are they working in unison? As far as he could see there was no
possibility of any such design. Hilda's account of Lord Chetwynde's
behavior toward her showed him simply a kind