end the
cornet in a poor way. He had not recovered the shock of his fever and
delirium in the Crimea, and both nerve and health were gone.

Nobody could be more kind and affectionate than the cornet and his deaf
mother. They guessed that he was "somebody," and that things were wrong
with him; and the cornet once or twice invited his confidence; but he
was too young, and Charles had not the energy to tell him anything.

And life was getting very, very weary business for Charles. By day,
riding had become a terror, and at night he got no rest. And his mind
began to dwell too much on the bridges over the Thames, and on the water
lapping and swirling about the piers.

Then, as it happened, a little shoeblack with whom Charles had struck up
a friendship, falling sick in a foul court in South London, Charles must
needs go and sit with him. The child died in his arms, and a dull terror
came on Charles when he thought of his homeward journey. A scripture
reader who had been in the room came towards him and laid his hand upon
his shoulder. Charles turned from the dead child, and looked up into the
face of John Marston, the best of his old Oxford friends.

They passed out of the house together, Charles clinging tight to John
Marston's arms. When they got to Marston's lodgings, Charles sat down by
the fire, and said quietly, "John, you have saved me! I should never
have got home this night."

But John Marston, by finding Charles, had dashed his dearest hopes to
the ground. He had always loved Mary Corby from his first visit to
Ravenshoe, and Mary loved Charles, who had loved Adelaide, who had
married Lord Welter. Marston thought there was just a chance for him,
and now that chance was gone. How did he behave, knowing that?

He put his hand on Charles's shoulder and said, "Charles--Charles, my
dear old boy, look up! Think of Mary. She has been wooed by more than
one, but I think her heart is yours yet."

"John," said Charles, "that is what has made me hide from you all like
this. I know that she loved me above all men; and partly that she should
forget a penniless and disgraced man like myself, and partly from a
silly pride, I have spent all my cunning on losing myself, hoping that
you would believe me dead."

"We have hunted you hard, Charles. You do not know, I suppose, that you
are a rich man, and undoubtedly heir of Ravenshoe, though one link is
still wanting."

"What do you mean?"

"There is no reasonable doubt, al