ive
battle."

"Oh! Edward! Edward! What are you saying?" said Maggie, sitting down on the
dresser, in absolute, bewildered despair. "What have you done?"

"I hardly know. I'm in a horrid dream. I see you think I'm mad. I wish I
were. Won't Nancy come down soon? You must hide me."

"Poor Nancy is ill in bed!" said Maggie.

"Thank God," said he. "There's one less. But my mother will be up soon,
will she not?"

"Not yet," replied Maggie. "Edward, dear, do try and tell me what you have
done. Why should the police be after you?"

"Why, Maggie," said he with a kind of forced, unnatural laugh, "they say
I've forged."

"And have you?" asked Maggie, in a still, low tone of quiet agony.

He did not answer for some time, but sat, looking on the floor with
unwinking eyes. At last he said, as if speaking to himself:

"If I have, it's no more than others have done before, and never been found
out. I was but borrowing money. I meant to repay it. If I had asked Mr.
Buxton, he would have lent it me."

"Mr. Buxton!" said Maggie.

"Yes!" answered he, looking sharply and suddenly up at her. "Your future
father-in-law. My father's old friend. It is he that is hunting me to
death! No need to look so white and horror-struck, Maggie! It's the way of
the world, as I might have known, if I had not been a blind fool."

"Mr. Buxton!" she whispered, faintly.

"Oh, Maggie!" said he, suddenly throwing himself at her feet, "save me! You
can do it. Write to Frank, and make him induce his father to let me off. I
came to see you, my sweet, merciful sister! I knew you would save me. Good
God! What noise is that? There are steps in the yard!"

And before she could speak, he had rushed into the little china closet,
which opened out of the parlor, and crouched down in the darkness. It was
only the man who brought their morning's supply of milk from a neighboring
farm. But when Maggie opened the kitchen door, she saw how the cold, pale
light of a winter's day had filled the air.

"You're late with your shutters to-day, miss," said the man. "I hope Nancy
has not been giving you all a bad night. Says I to Thomas, who came with me
to the gate, 'It's many a year since I saw them parlor shutters barred up
at half-past eight.'"

Maggie went, as soon as he was gone, and opened all the low windows, in
order that they might look as usual. She wondered at her own outward
composure, while she felt so dead and sick at heart. Her mother would
soon get