ad been a success--he kept close in his school
during the day, ventured out warily at night, and went no more to the
railway station. He examined the advertisements in the newspapers for
any sign that Riderhood acted on his hinted threat of so summoning him
to renew their acquaintance, but found none. Having paid him handsomely
for the support and accommodation he had had at the Lock House, and
knowing him to be a very ignorant man who could not write, he began to
doubt whether he was to be feared at all, or whether they need ever meet
again.

All this time, his mind was never off the rack, and his raging sense of
having been made to fling himself across the chasm which divided those
two, and bridge it over for their coming together, never cooled down.
This horrible condition brought on other fits. He could not have said
how many, or when; but he saw in the faces of his pupils that they had
seen him in that state, and that they were possessed by a dread of his
relapsing.

One winter day when a slight fall of snow was feathering the sills and
frames of the schoolroom windows, he stood at his black board, crayon in
hand, about to commence with a class; when, reading in the countenances
of those boys that there was something wrong, and that they seemed in
alarm for him, he turned his eyes to the door towards which they faced.
He then saw a slouching man of forbidding appearance standing in the
midst of the school, with a bundle under his arm; and saw that it was
Riderhood.

He sat down on a stool which one of his boys put for him, and he had a
passing knowledge that he was in danger of falling, and that his face
was becoming distorted. But, the fit went off for that time, and he
wiped his mouth, and stood up again.

'Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave!' said Riderhood, knuckling
his forehead, with a chuckle and a leer. 'What place may this be?'

'This is a school.'

'Where young folks learns wot's right?' said Riderhood, gravely nodding.
'Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave! But who teaches this school?'

'I do.'

'You're the master, are you, learned governor?'

'Yes. I am the master.'

'And a lovely thing it must be,' said Riderhood, 'fur to learn young
folks wot's right, and fur to know wot THEY know wot you do it. Beg your
pardon, learned governor! By your leave!--That there black board; wot's
it for?'

'It is for drawing on, or writing on.'

'Is it though!' said Riderhood. 'Who'd have thought