nd leaned his back, with his
hands behind him, with perfect effrontery, against the palings.

"I know all," said he. "I overheard you in your office fourteen years
ago, when you changed children with Hope."

Bartley uttered an exclamation of dismay.

"And I've been hovering about here all day, and watched the little game,
and now I am fly, and no mistake."

Bartley threw up his hands in dismay. "Then it's all over; I am doubly
ruined. I can not hope to silence you both."

"Don't speak so loud, governor."

"Why not?" said Bartley, "others will, if I don't." He lowered his voice
for all that, and wondered what was coming.

"Listen to me," said Monckton, exchanging his cynical manner for a quiet
and weighty one.

Bartley began to wonder, and look at him with a sort of awe. The words
now dropped out of Monckton's thin lips as if they were chips of granite,
so full of meaning was every syllable, and Bartley felt it.

"It's not so bad as it looks. There are only two men that know you
are a felon."

Bartley winced visibly.

"Now one of those men is to be bought"--Bartley lifted his head with a
faint gleam of hope at that--"and the other--has gone--down a coal-mine."

"What good will that do me?"

The villain paused, and looked Bartley in the face.

"That depends. Suppose you were to offer me what you offered Hope, and
suppose Hope--was never--to come up--again?"

"No such luck," said Bartley, shaking his head sorrowfully.

"Luck," said Monckton, contemptuously; "we make our own luck. Do you see
that vagabond lying under the tree, that's Ben Burnley."

"Ah!" said Bartley, "the ruffian Hope discharged."

"The same, and a man that is burning to be revenged on him: _he's_ your
luck, Mr. Bartley; I know the man, and what he has done in a mine
before to-day."

Then he drew near to Bartley's ear, and hissed into it these
fearful words:

"Send him down the mine, promise him five hundred pounds--if William
Hope--never comes up again--and William Hope never will."

Bartley drew back aghast. "Assassination!" he cried, and by a generous
impulse of horror he half fled from the tempter; but Monckton followed
him up and laid his hand upon his shoulder.

"Hush," said he, "you are getting too near that window; and it is open.
Let me see there's nobody inside."

He looked in. There was nobody. Grace was upstairs, but it did so happen
that she came into the room soon after.

"Nothing of the kind. Accident. Accident