shut and locked it, and put the key in
her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access
would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's
character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that
he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on
returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused
harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of
communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to
remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be
sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?

It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old
man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had
registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray
of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He
had told her that she was like the sunshine to him--better than
sunshine--and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him
waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting
upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for
the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would
begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any
count of the passage of time of which she was not sure. His mind seemed
to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a
state to which the outside world seemed only half real--a phase of being
in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable
monotony of an everlasting _now_.

Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this
lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost
affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.
True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was
sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather
than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to
her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become
reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic
physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to
respect as well as to pity?

For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement
entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her gran