she asked. "Where are you taking them?"

"These be Mr. Ezra Gold's music-books," he answered. "He's gi'en 'em to
his nevew, and I'm a-wheelin' of 'em home for him. Look here--see what
his lordship's gi'en to me."

But Miss Blythe was busily taking book after book, and was turning over
the leaves as if she sought for something. Her hands were trembling
more and more, and even Joseph thought it odd that so precise and neat
a personage should have let her parasol tumble and lie unregarded in the
dust.

"Wheel them to my house, Joseph Beaker," she said at last, with a covert
eagerness. "I want to look at them; I should like to look at them."

"My orders was to wheel 'em straight home," returned Joseph. "I worn't
told to let nobody handle 'em, but it stands to rayson as they hadn't
ought to be handled."

"Wheel them to my door," said the little old maid, stooping for her
fallen sunshade. "I will give you sixpence."

"That's another matter," said Joseph, sagely. "If a lady wants to look
at 'em theer can't be nothin' again that, I _should_ think."

The barrow was wheeled to Miss Blythe's door, and Miss Blythe in the
open air, without waiting to remove bonnet, gloves, or mantle, began to
turn over the leaves of the books, taking one systematically after the
other, and racing through them as if her life depended on the task.
Rapidly as she went to work at this singular task, it occupied an hour,
and when it was all over the prim, starched old lady actually sat down
upon her own door-step with lax hands, and crushed her best new bonnet
against the door-post in a very abandonment of lassitude and fatigue.

"Done?" said Joseph, who had been sitting on the handle of the
wheelbarrow, occasionally nodding and dozing in the pleasant sunlight.
Miss Blythe arose languidly and gave him the promised sixpence. "You'm a
wonner to read, you be, mum," he said, as he pocketed the coin. "I niver
seed none on 'em goo at sich a pace as that. Sometimes my lord 'll look
at one side of a noospaper for a hour together. I've sin him do it."

Receiving no reply, he spat upon his hands again, and started on the
final course of his journey. Rachel closed the gate behind him, and
walked automatically into her own sitting-room.

"There is no fool like an old fool," she said, mournfully. Then, with
sudden fire, "I have known the man to be a villain these six-and-twenty
years. Why should I doubt it now?"

And then, her starched dignity and her ang