mingled with the scent of new bread; the quiet falling of the ash from the quiet fire: peaceful security, free from the struggle of creeds or tariffs, yet never grossly material, because of the outdoor life that enwrapped it and the deadand-gone generations that spoke as plainly o' nights as in any Japanese household: far enough removed from the automobile life.

Yet even here, in this fastness of Job ere the troubles came upon him, there was repining, for down the staircase, contending with the clock-beats, there came an old man's voice, saying, "Not for me, O Lord, not for me;" for Mr. Hannaford on the loss of his second wife and the two children had not cursed God and died, but lived and denied, which is perhaps even less illuminating. He was firmly convinced that the loss had been brought upon him by some untraceable judgment that condemned an unknown sin. On all other points clear-headed and even shrewd, on this delusion he was an impregnable fortress, against which local preachers and the Established Church representatives alike hurled themselves in vain. It was still, after heated argument on the Divine sacrifice, "Not for me, O Lord, not for me." Yet in the business world those who had dealings with him found him hard as a stone, strictly just to the letter it is true, but as unerring in his aim as a law of nature. Outside business he was a chivalrous man, tender towards women and children, kindly and even generous. It almost seemed that the strain of business hardness persisted in him as an inheritance of his stern ancestors, like a vermiform appendage, or some other organ handed down from our bestial forefathers. It is often impossible, on any other theory, to account for the intrusive veins that emerge into regularly deposited strata of character, such mental "elvans," as the West-country miners call intrusive igneous rocks.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

OVER Challacombe the frosty twinkling of the starlight lit up the vaults of space; on the cliff edge the smoke from the houses below, caught by the wind from the sea, floated against the luminous background of sea and sky in strange threatening shapes, like an endless procession of souls passing up from the swelter of the earth life.

Or so it seemed to Miss Penaluna as she paced restlessly to and fro on the field-path from which she could look into the windows of Captain Penrice's house. The trees of his garden had been carefully thinned so that through the spaces the sea might be visible, and the stars shone through the tracery of bare boughs like golden apples caught in a net. Miss Penaluna was perfectly familiar with the sounds of the place, the incessant tree rustlings that came up from the whispering valley, for her own house opened higher up on the same direction, yet to-night every sound seemed strange and full of ominous suggestion, like a well-known landscape seen under the glow of a fire; the gurgling rush of the water sucked in by a bullock from the stream at the bottom of the field sent the pulses quivering through her frame. To relieve the tension, she began to count the trees in the garden on the other side of the low hedge where she stood, forcibly rejecting from her attention any other pre-occupation. As she counted them, a light was lit in the captain's sitting-room, and beneath a half-lowered window-blind she could see the strong glow from a shaded

lamp falling straight on his hands, laid across the table on the white cloth which was always kept spread for meals.

She could not take her eyes off those hands; gnarled, roughened, stained, she saw how they grasped from the way the pipe was held. They exercised a power over her that beat and hammered in the pulses of her heart and temples, for all the grip, the fighting force of the world, seemed symbolized by their breadth, their bossy finger-joints, even by the striated marks of the nails she remembered to have noted in the daylight; the power that girdles the sea and bridles the powers of the air, the male world of work, effort, achievement. Those homely members stood for all this to Miss Penaluna, for in the fear that possessed her at the moment, she was doing in mind what the great artist does for the world-painting the invisible through the visible.

Miss Penaluna's fancy to-night was endowed with the last best gift of the creative gods, the comfortable creature, homeliness, by means of which a Millet, with a peasant or two and a few clods of earth, can give us a vision of the age-long human patience; without which the greatest master of technique can but give us a "Charity" that moves us to nothing more vital than admiration of his flesh tints.

As she looked at these hands the soft inefficiency of her days shamed her. Warmth and food and shelter she had received at the hands of men-what payment had she ever rendered for all the flabby comfort of her days? The whole family of middle-class drawing-room women began to seem a set of cat-lapping idiots.

There were two circumstances driving Miss Penaluna to this terrible conclusion-fear and an intellectual sustenance too strong for her digestion. The fear was entirely irrational, but merely on that account the more terrifying, for on the mind-charts of lonely women there are marked innumerable vigias, signs of suspected reefs and islands, born, not of

R

rum and sea-scare like the vigias of the sailorman, but of dammed-back fancies and frustrated instincts. This was the night of the meeting at which Dr. Tony was to explain his position to Challacombe, and at which Captain Penrice was to be chairman; this fact was the rum whence was born the vigia in question in Miss Penaluna. For the rest, the captain's books, among which Miss Penaluna had been ranging, were not of the drawing-room kind in which hearts never beat, nor thoughts flash, for fear exquisite clothes and conventions should be ruffled, but of that unclothed kind where the systole and diastole of the heart sound, instead of the frou-frou of clothes.

She awoke at last, as one wakes from sleep to the remembrance of some dread to be lived through in the coming day. "My dear soul, I can't," she whispered to herself; "don't ask it of me," for to her old self the new will, that drove her to the captain's door, was as impervious spirit to dull flesh. She had prepared many speeches with which to begin what she had in mind, but they all failed when Captain Penrice at last answered her knock. Then the blank look on his face irritated her; she wanted to wipe it off.

"There's a man that's dying," she said, "he's been asking for you. He can't go till you've seen him, and yet he's longing-there's something he must say to you."

To her own ears the tale sounded preposterous, as her voice tailed off into a little whistle of agitation.

"But you, Miss Dorothy, why should you have brought me word?"

"Oh, that's nothing. I happened to be visiting at Three Arms Cross, and I came on at once."

"Three Arms Cross; that's a goodish way to go, and there's that meeting."

"Oh, but you must come. The doctor can drive you back. He's there too, and if he's late, it won't matter

about your being late too. Come at once," she said, laying hands on him in her excitement.

"Who in the world can it be?" he said, struggling into a coat. "Anyway, you'd best sit down a bit and rest, you're out of breath, and William shall get you a glass of wine." "No, no, I couldn't touch anything. I must keep moving, it's frightened me so."

They walked quickly down the field-path, which was much shorter than the roadway to Three Arms Cross, which lies on the way to Regiswear.

There

Queer noises were sounding in Miss Penaluna's ears till she feared she was going to lose consciousness. seemed a mist before her, but she heard the noises of the trees, and felt that the captain had drawn her hand under his arm.

"It's a good step," he said at last, "but you wouldn't have brought me out on a fool's errand, that's not like you, Miss Penaluna. I wouldn't be late for a good deal to-night. But I don't see there's any call for you to come."

He was resolutely talking, for he imagined that Miss Penaluna was upset by witnessing some accident, since he was unable to ascribe her agitation to any other cause.

"You didn't hear the name of the man, I suppose?" he said at last. She thought he looked at her curiously as they hurried along side by side.

"No," said Miss Penaluna, softly. She was thinking more of the ring of fire that seemed to be pressing on her temples than of the concoction of her story.

"I wouldn't miss to-night for a good deal," he said, after an awkward silence. "You see, the doctor's had no end of a struggle to get his way. Everybody set themselves against his washing the town's dirty linen in public, as they call it, but he's now practically no longer a servant of the Board, and I take it he's therefore a free agent. But he couldn't