lly moving forth, Dick and Joan sat
side by side, tenderly held hands, and looked, with ever growing
affection, in each other's eyes.

Thenceforth the dust and blood of that unruly epoch passed them by. They
dwelt apart from alarms in the green forest where their love began.

Two old men in the meanwhile enjoyed pensions in great prosperity and
peace, and with perhaps a superfluity of ale and wine, in Tunstall
hamlet. One had been all his life a shipman, and continued to the last
to lament his man Tom. The other, who had been a bit of everything,
turned in the end towards piety, and made a most religious death under
the name of Brother Honestus in the neighbouring abbey. So Lawless had
his will, and died a friar.

MARKHEIM

MARKHEIM

"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some
customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior
knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so that
the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
continued, "I profit by my virtue."

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame,
he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make
a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you
will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my
books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark
in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no
awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has
to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his
usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, "You can give,
as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the
object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable
collector, sir!"

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe,
looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
infinite pity, and a touch of horror.

"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to
buy. I have no curios t