THREE MEN AND A MAID.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9026, 13 January 1908, Page 2

THREE MEN AND A MAID.

CHAPTER lll.—Continued. She longed to drop a hint to the Squire that Marjorie was with Mr Warren in Fennell's Tower; for, anyway.yhe thought Marjorie was already disgraced, James' aims were therefore already secured, and it did no*; matter whether the two remained together until the morning or only until after ten o'clock that night. When she reached the hotel, after ■parting from James Courthope, lights had long since been lit. The Squire still paced the drawing-room; and here, slight as it may seem, was the dangerous fact in the situation. The angry man all this time would eat nothing, nor would he even drink, though Jonas Neyland had several times implored him to dine, and await Marjorie's home coming at his ease. The Squire was in ill mood therefore. At that hour of the day, usually, he was rosy with food, well warmed with wine;to-night he paced there stubbornly, with a perilous patience, refusing meanwhile to be comforted, with misery hanging on his cheek. Now, hunger, in certain temperaments produces a madness which is classed as'a disease in books oh pathology; and "hunger madness," explusive in itself, will, when accompanied by drink craving, go eff like a gun. After a long time—it might be hours —when the night was old, and Hudston folk mainly in bed, Hannah, unable any more to bear the burden of her secret, fluttered into the draw-ing-room, and, apologising to Squire Courthope for the intrusion, began to look about the room as if seeking something. Courthope choked back his fury at sight ot her. "Well, Hannah." said he, in the voice of a saint, "what has become of your sister?" Hannah, pallid as an apparition, smiled. "'fibre's no telling, sir, I am .sure. She's nowhere in the village, that's pretty certain, and there's only one ■\hing for anybody to think " "And what is that?" ",No doubt she's out on the moor." "The moor! At this time of night? "I don't mean in the open, sir." "Well, where do you mean?" "There's Fennell's Tower " "Absurd: wha*. are you thinking of, Hannah?" "She has been there several times of an evening, I know, though never so late as this." "Fennell's Tower," muttered the Squire. "What on earth would she go t» the tower for?" Hannah peered deeply into a flower vase, looking palely for something But she smiled again, saying: "She wouldn't be there alone, you know." Robert Courthope made no answer. He resumed his pacing, his hands behind his back, with the hunting crop in them, and for a minute or two the clock ticked in silence, while Hannah continued to pry earnestly into each dim corner of the room. Then he broke the stillness, asking with a forced calmness that quivered his lip—"Whom would she go to the tower with ,eh?" "Oh, Mr Courthope," said Hannab, "it wouldn't do to tell tales out of school!" "No," said the man, "true enough, so very true, when you come to think of it. Yet you will' tell me, eh?" The Squire asked it with a weedling grin, his face near to Hannah's. And she, white and smiling, her eyes cast down to her hands, answered — "Why, anybody might,tell you, for it's the talk of the village, seeing that she is always with Mr Warren." At this, Robert Courthope, walked away from her}, with his head bent; then suddenly turning, he put his clenched hand on the table, staring at Hannah with a flaming face and trembling ±>ame. No word was j spoken; only, while the clock ticked many times, the man glared at the ghost which he saw, and the woman, too, stared, stricken dumb by the sight of his mute rage. All at once, Hannah found herself alone. Robert Courthope was gone pelting down the stairs—through the j village street—down Hewersfield Lane to the moor. He was of a build too prone to portliness to run very far.! When he was compelled to stop and Walk, he felt wronged by his lack of wind, and when the rising gale, which was blowing straight in his face, impeded him, he felt wronged by heaven as well as earth. Let it be understood that the first lesson which he had learned on leaving his cradle was that Hudston was his, by divine right—the land, the houses, the people—all that Hudston held within its bounds—and that Marjorie meant life to him now. When he reached the footpath through the thicket surrounding the tower, he advanced as cunningly as one stalking game. On coming within a yard of the little clearing near the entrance to the tower l.e crouched low on his knees to watch. The moon was moving wildly in and out among flying masses of cloud, lighti.. r ; thorn here and there to the wnitein!.-! of lunatic countenances, so Rouen Courthope could see the two prisoners. Little he dreamed that they wore there not of their own free will, and, indeed, he might well be'forgiven His unhappy error at that moment. • , They were standing on the roof, and the hattlemented coping hid them no higher than Marjorie's waist. The clean, high-headed profile of Philip, bending over Marjorie, looked almost elfin in the moonshine, while Marjorie's arms cast about Philip's neck had, in the maddened eyes of the man beneath, a certain wildness of abandonment. He could see, but because he could not -ee nearly and clearly, the scene up there on the tower-top was toucheJ for him with something of strange-

By ROBERT FRASER.

[Published By Special Arrangement.] [All Eights Reserved.]

ness and glamour, which poisoned his jealousy with a drop of more mortal gall. That same redness and shaking of the face with which he had lately glared at Hannah in the hotel overcame him now, and he glared at them in their heaven, until finally there gushed from his throat one loud, long bellow of uncouth laughter, which the storm and the moor flung far in echoes down-the valley; and even as he yielded to this sudden mania he was gone, rushing back the way he had come. Such a laugh was that, so startling to the lovers on the tower, that some seconds elapsed before they could collect themselves sufficiently to be glad of some one near to set them free. And some seconds more passed before Philip began to hail the laugher with all the power of his lungs. But Courthope was gone like a madman, crashing his way through the tangled gorse, quite heedless of the path, and still not knowing that the others were imprisoned. Philip's shouts reached his ears as sounds which had no concern for him; and Philip, receiving no answer, said to Marjorie in the greatest surprise—"He doesn't seem to answer. . . . ! Didn't it sound to you like Robert Courthope's laugh?" "I am certain that it was his," answered Marjorie, clinging to him in fear. And thus was another strand spun in the poisonous spider's web of circumstance which environed them. Courthope, meantime, was hurrying back to the village to get his horse, flying from that moonlit scene on the tower as from the plague, in the mood of a man who finds that the house of life has collapsed about his head, too dazed to do aught but follow the instinct which prompts the undone to fly. He was hurrying, therefore, with the intention of mounting his horse, of racing to Edenhurst, and there perhaps assuaging a dreadful thirst which possessed him before his dazed brain should be able to resume its work of thought. 'But in Hewersfield Lane he was stopped, for, at a corner of the road, black under treeshadow, he ran full tilt into the arms of the Hon. and Rev. Oliver Isambard, Vicar and Rural Dear, Philip Warren's uncle, who was then returning to the Vicarage from the of his curate. The impact between them had again the effect of bringing from the Squire's dry mouth a loud guffaw, upon which the clergyman, whose ear detected something deranged in the laugh, said: "What is wrong, Courthope, and why do you add enjoyment to injury?" "Oh, is it you, Isambard?" cried Courthope, quickly alive to the retribution which should overtake Philip Warren. "It is the part of me which you have left. Whither away at so furious a rate?" "Ha, ha! I have just left the moor. I say, where's your nephew to-night, Isambard?" "I hope that by this time he is at home," answered the Vicar. "He was not there when I quitted the house an hour ago." Then Robert Courthope caught the Vicar by the shoulder, brought his mouth close to the Vicar's ear, and did a dastardly thing, a thing which, in his proper senses, he would have been far too good a fellow to do. "He's on top of Fennell's Tuwer—with a girl," he hissed. "You go soft You'll see for yourself." And he was gone again, in a frenzied run. The Vicar and Rural Dean of Hudston took thought for a moment while he listened to the retreating footsteps. Then he went on his way to the bottom of the lane, but there, instead of turning to the right toward the Vicarage, turned to the kft toward the moor. He would have regarded Courthope's whisper as the raving of a madman, but for Philip's strange absence from home j all that evening. Even as it was, he ' little believed; but he went to see, | " went soft" as the Squire had bid him, and saw, and came away "soft." Then he went home, took off. his overcoat, and sat up with a trimmed lamp, waiting for Philip to come. He was a man of under middle height and of middle age, broad in the shoulders, with a square brow, and eyes like two blue slits peering through a mask. His face was dry, pale, and seemed hewn out of rock. His lips pursed together like a clip. All over the Vicar was written the word "Character," and of such human granite is fashioned neither Hope nor Charity, no matter what the Faith to which, it is moulded. (To be continued.)

A bad taste in the mouth always arises from a. disordered stomach, and may bo corrected by taking it dose of Chamberlain's Tablets. They cleanse and invigorate the stomach, improve the digestion, arid give one a relish for food.