skipper who suspects fire in the hold. She doubted the more as health and strength returned to her lodger, especially after a certain episode, of which she was an indignant spectator.

The walls at Uppacott were three feet deep, and the windows yawned like chasms opening on the dusk of night. As Wilmot stood one evening before the blurred mirror that refused to reflect much, being patched with blotches of damp, she was watched by Tryphena from the doorway behind at the top of the steep staircase of nine steps. There were but two bedrooms upstairs, and these only divided by partitions of painted wood. Fortunately, Heber, whose snores could be heard in the yard of a still night, had a room opposite, over the hay tallat.

As Tryphena watched, she saw her lodger turn down the neck of her nightdress in a square.

"That looks bad," said the watcher to herself, eyeing Wilmot's proceeding with a full-hearted absorption that left no room for shame at playing the spy. "I know what baring your buzzum means with a little light o' love like that. Thank God, my chest is as flat as an ironing-board."

Suddenly her interest changed to alarm as she saw Wilmot fly to the chimney-piece and seize two ornamental candlesticks fitted with blue-and-pink wax candles.

"Oh, the little hussy!" said Tryphena, "I'm gallied if she isn't going to light 'em, and I haven't so much as put a match near 'em since Cousin Selina brought 'em over. And to light my best candles for her pringle-prangling."

She was in the room in a whirlwind of petticoats, and had wrenched the treasure away before Wilmot knew what was happening.

"No, you don't, my lady," she said. "Lay snares you may, but you'll not do it by the light of my best candles. A farthing rushlight ought to be enough to light a decent woman to her bed."

Tryphena was not at all sure that strict propriety did not demand that the holy should go darkling between the cold sheets.

"How dare you come into my room like this?" flashed Wilmot, as, with one bare foot covering the other and scarlet signals flying, she faced her angry hostess.

"My candles that I'd been treasuring," gasped Tryphena. "I shall go to-morrow. I won't be treated in this way. You've no right to come in here like this," retorted Wilmot.

"You can go first thing if you like, for we're not up to the level of bare shoulders here, save of a morning with flannel and soap," screamed Tryphena.

She banged the door behind her, and Wilmot sat down, her nerves shaken by the onslaught. To her horrified fancy the youth that had welled up in her seemed now no better than a crime, for only a child's hand had the right to nestle among the laces at her breast.

In the grey dawn at five o'clock she was roused by what seemed the noise of an angry mob. As she awoke more fully, she recognized it as the crying of a flock of sheep, frenzied at the loss of their lambs, and penned in the home field far from their children, whom they were never to see again. The baaing rose and fell, beating like the waves of memory on her ears, till she stopped them with her fingers.

She heard Tryphena moving on the stairs, and called to her-" How long will those sheep cry for their lambs, Tryphena? I can't bear to hear them; it's so cruel."

"Oh, for a few days. As for cruel, what's got to be, must be, cruel or no."

All the agony of loss swept over the mother, the agony of empty arms that felt in fancy the pressure of a warm body; all the beauty and mystery of the world could be no consolation with the inarticulate wailing of these robbed creatures sounding through her heart.

CHAPTER XXII

THE RUBICON

"How's that?" said Dr. Tony to the two men who pored with anxious faces over a bared arm that lay stretched across the table under the circle of light from the central gas-jet.

The possessor of the arm, a stunted artisan who looked as if he had breathed nothing but tainted air all his life, blinked in the strong light out of great, black-circled eyes, almost with an air of proud possession; it was a great day in his life, the day that brought Councillor Meech and two doctors to look at his arm.

"Dropped hand," said Dr. Earwaker, winking nervously, with his ferret eyes fixed on the councillor, who stood with contemptuous, pursed-out lips, for he had not yet summed up the situation. Dr. Earwaker, too, was possessed by a great wonder, since his rival had never before had a good word to throw him; and here was he, Dr. Earwaker, in Dr. Tony's house, in what seemed to his incredulous mind a consultation.

"You'll take your Bible oath?" said Dr. Tony, recklessly regardless of whatever professional manner he may have once possessed.

"I'll take any number of oaths," said the other, truculently.

"And the cause?" asked Dr. Tony.

"Lead-poisoning," said Dr. Earwaker, querulously, "as you know as well as I."

The voluntary muscles of the forearm had become paralyzed and the hand was useless; it had "dropped," and could not be raised at all, for the extensors were affected.

"Been working at lead-piping, my man?" he asked. "I'm a carpenter by trade, and I hain't touched a bit of lead as I know by for months," said the man.

"There, you can go, we've seen enough; Dr. Borlace'll soon put it right for you," said the councillor, testily. "It's a curious case that the doctor thought we'd like to see,” he added in a tone of large explanation.

"Ay," said the man, as he rose to go, while Dr. Tony gently slipped his arm into a sling, " they talk a deal of the lead-poisoning now in Challacombe. I can never mind the likes of it before, though I've been here a good few years.”

He did not add that he knew the supposed source, the new water supply, for Dr. Tony's haggard, reckless face had called out all the chivalry in his mind.

"Now, what's the meaning of this?" said the councillor when the man was gone.

Dr. Earwaker had withdrawn and stood leaning against the mantelpiece, watching the two others. The rival practitioner had a long white beard, and ought to have been reverend looking, but was not, for shifty, watery eyes, born of gin-tippling, combined with a laxity of every line in his face that ought to have been taut, do not give a reverence of aspect. Dr. Earwaker had been worsted in the battle for self-control, that battle which all Adam's children wage first or last, or rather, first and last. Just now he looked alert, for a little farce was being worked for his benefit.

"Why are we, Dr. Earwaker and me," continued Mr. Meech, with a wave of his left hand towards the man in the background, "why are we summoned to look in at your patients? You'll be calling in every councillor soon to bear a hand every time there's a broken leg," he ended, with a rough laugh. Bluster is a commonly used weapon in many trying situations.

"I called you in," said Dr. Tony, sinking wearily into

a chair that stood by the table, and carefully avoiding the eyes of both men, "because it's my duty, which I have neglected till I'm ashamed to crawl on the earth, to show plainly that we've done a great wrong, that we've brought disease into Challacombe instead of health. I've told you before, but here's proof for you." His head had sunk forward on his breast; he had come to the end of a long struggle with himself, a struggle fought in silence, as Dr. Tony always found it most difficult to fight; all excitement, even all interest in his own words, seemed to fail him. Weariness, mingled with relief, was all that he actually felt now that the crisis had come.

"Speak for yourself," said the councillor, savagely; "if you, as medical officer, have done what you say, don't attempt to throw the blame on anybody else. You've misled the Board, that's what you've done, and now you come sneaking under other folks' coat-tails. I shall take care to make your position clear at the next meeting of the Board."

"I've no doubt you will," said Dr. Tony, quietly. "I've no desire to do anything but bear my own burdens. All I care for now is that the matter shall be put right by new pipes. I shall send in my resignation shortly."

"And that shan't do you much good," snorted Mr. Meech, his wrath leaping the bounds. "I'll take good care that you shan't get off scot-free, without anybody knowing what you've been up to. I'll publish it, the public shall know what sort of fellow the present Challacombe medical officer is."

"That's why I asked Earwaker here," put in Dr. Tony. "Knowing that his tongue is so loose on its hinges that the pretty tale of the dropped hand'll be all over the town in two days," roared the councillor.

"I think we've had about enough of this interview," said Dr. Tony, rising, "and Dr. Earwaker is present in the room, Mr. Meech."