I am not mad."

She passed into the study with a resolute step, and held the door for
Sir Thomas to enter. Her father followed also, as a child traces its
mother's footsteps, and looked around him, and at his daughter, with
weak astonishment. One or two of the servants, who were loitering in
the hall, moved as if they would have followed.

"Back, back, I say!" she repeated; "I need no witnesses--there will be
enough of them soon. Mr. Glasscott," she continued, closing the door,
"hear me, while I am able to bear testimony, lest weakness--woman's
weakness--overcome me, and I falter in the truth. In the broom-sellers'
cottage, across the common, on the left side of the chimney, concealed
by a large flat stone, is a hole--a den; there much of the property
taken from Sir Thomas Purcel's last night is concealed."

"I have long suspected these men--Smith, I think, they call themselves.
Yet they are but two. Now, we have abundant proof, that _three_ men
absolutely entered the house."

"There was a third," murmured Grace, almost inaudibly.

"Who?"

"My--my--my husband!" and, as she uttered the word, she leaned against
the chimney-piece for support, and buried her face in her hands.

The clergyman groaned audibly;--he had known Grace from her childhood,
and felt what the declaration must have cost her. Sir Thomas Purcel was
cast in a sterner mould.

"We are put clearly on the track, Mr. Glasscott," he said, "and must
follow it forthwith; yet there is something most repugnant to my
feelings in finding a woman thus herald her husband to destruction."

"It was to save my children from sin!" exclaimed Grace, starting
forward with an energy that appalled them all: "God in heaven, whom
I call to witness, knows, that though I would sooner starve than taste
of the fruits of his wickedness, yet I could not betray the husband of
my bosom to--to--I dare not think what!--I tried, I laboured to give
my offspring honest bread. I neither asked nor received charity; with
my hands I laboured, and blessed the Power that enabled me to do so.
If we are poor, we will be honest, was my maxim, and my boast. But
he--my husband--returned; he taught my boy to lie--to steal! and
when I remonstrated--when I prayed, with many tears, that he would
cease to train our--ay, _our_ child for destruction, he
mocked--scorned--told me, that, one by one, I should be bereaved of my
children if I thwarted his purposes; and that I might seek in vain for
them