t two or three nights, she would start
from sleep again and again screaming for help and mercy and nothing would
quiet her till she was wide awake and saw in the fire-light the curtained
windows and the bolted door, and the kindly face of an old servant or
Mistress Margaret with her beads in her hand. Isabel, who came up to see
her two or three times, was both startled and affected by the change in
her; and by the extraordinary mood of humility which seemed to have taken
possession of the hard self-righteous Puritan.

"I begged pardon," she whispered to the girl one evening, sitting up in
bed and staring at her with wide, hard eyes, "I begged pardon of Lady
Maxwell, though I am not fit to speak to her. Do you think she can ever
forgive me? Do you think she can? It was I, you know, who wrought all the
mischief, as I have wrought all the mischief in the village all these
years. She said she did, and she kissed me, and said that our Saviour had
forgiven her much more. But--but do you think she has forgiven me?" And
then again, another night, a day or two before they left the place, she
spoke to Isabel again.

"Look after the poor bodies," she said, "teach them a little charity; I
have taught them nought but bitterness and malice, so they have but given
me my own back again. I have reaped what I have sown."

So the Dents slipped off early one morning before the folk were up; and
by the following Sunday, young Mr. Bodder, of whom the Bishop entertained
a high opinion, occupied the little desk outside the chancel arch; and
Great Keynes once more had to thank God and the diocesan that it
possessed a proper minister of its own, and not a mere unordained reader,
which was all that many parishes could obtain.

Towards the end of September further hints began to arrive, very much
underlined, in the knight's letters, of Mr. Stewart and his sufferings.

"You remember _our friend_," Isabel read out one Saturday evening, "_not_
Mr. Stewart." (This puzzled the old ladies sorely till Isabel explained
their lord's artfulness.) "My dearest, I fear the worst for him. I do not
mean apostacy, thank God. But I fear that these _wolves_ have torn him
sadly, in their _dens_." Then followed the story of Mrs. Jakes, with all
its horror, all the greater from the obscurity of the details.

Isabel put the paper down trembling, as she sat on the rug before the
fire in the parlour upstairs, and thought of the bright-eyed, red-haired
man with his s