dn't say, sir, I'm sure."

"Why, three boys' fur caps, and a lot of serge, and a girl's cloak,
and four pairs of cheap stockings, and other things besides. I was in
Dutton's shop when he came in. He didn't see me because of a pile of
blankets, and I heard him buy all those things, and carry them off. He
paid for half, and the rest he said he'd pay for this week. He must
have bought things there before, or they wouldn't have trusted him.
But, you know, they'd come to very nearly as much as his wages."

"Yes; I don't understand it," said Mr. Munster. "But, after all, it
isn't our business if he does his duty at the mill."

"No, I know," said Archie; "but I believe there's something wrong
about him, and I should like to know what it is."

"Well, 'give him enough rope and he'll hang himself,' as they say,"
rejoined Mr. Munster--"that is, if your ideas about him are true."

Archie said no more on the subject then, but he made up his mind to
keep a sharp look-out upon Stephen's conduct. Whenever he met him,
therefore, he looked keenly at him; and he would sometimes come
through the great room where Stephen worked, with a number of other
men and lads, and stand close to him, silently scrutinizing him. If he
spoke to him, it was always to ask a question which obliged young
Bennett to say a good deal in reply; and Archie was forced to own that
he displayed a considerable knowledge of the branch of business in
which he was occupied.

But Stephen soon discovered that he was regarded with suspicion, and
he came to dread his young master's approach, and the cold, searching
glance of his blue eyes.

Stephen had looked haggard and careworn from the first, but as weeks
passed on he seemed to get worse. He still did his duty as well, or
almost as well, as ever, but he grew perceptibly weaker every day, and
at last he could hardly drag himself along.

"I doubt if I'll last much longer," he said to himself, as he reached
the mill one morning about three months after his first arrival at
Longcross, "but father's time will be out next week. I must write to
him to-day or to-morrow and warn him what may be coming."

There was only one man at the mill who had ever been the least civil
to Stephen. This was a gay, thoughtless young fellow named Timothy
Lingard.

He always rather prided himself on taking a different side from the
other men, and in his light, careless way he had rather patronized
Stephen when he saw him.

Not that th