and carrying out his directions with fidelity and zeal. He kept Nugent's accounts, and occasionally his farm journal; and, as his manners improved with the improvement of his mind, was looked upon by strangers more as a young secretary or clerk, than as a menial dependant. After three or four weeks' absence at an agricultural college, whither Nugent sent him to learn something about chemical manures, the difference in his manner and bearing, from mixing for a short time with young men all of them respectable and many of them refined and gentlemanly, was very striking.

Nugent, as he watched his slim and well-knit form, acquiring, as time passed on, an elasticity and grace uncommon in the usual run of lads, often called to mind how Margaret Harrill had intimated that the mother was of gentle blood, and that some other than Harrill was his father. But this rested simply on Harrill's own unsupported statement to Margaret. And what was it worth?

Nugent did not communicate any of these vague speculations on the subject of Edward's parentage to Gertrude. He thought it was not delicate to discuss such matters with her. Thus it happened that Gertrude, in common with most people in the vicinity, looked upon Edward as Harrill's son.

CHAPTER XXI.

CLAWTHORP LUNATIC ASYLUM AT MIDNIGHT.

WE saw in the last chapter that Mr. George Weston's attempts to ingratiate himself with Edward were decidedly unsuccessful. But though repulsed by the lad, Weston had made friends with Mrs. Medley the matron, and in a cautious way showed an interest in his welfare, and elicited from that lady a promise to let him know without delay whenever the boy took his leave of the workhouse. Accordingly, when Nugent suddenly came to the resolution of removing him to the Manor Farm, Mrs. Medley faithfully despatched a letter to the address Weston had left with her. This letter never reached him, on account of circumstances which will be shortly explained.

Weston, freed from the tyranny exercised over him by Harrill, was still in a very uncomfortable position. A rumour reached him that some labouring men had seen him in company with Harrill on the afternoon of the catastrophe at the

river Oke. Rentworth was, therefore, no longer a safe place for him, and he quitted it the very evening before Mrs. Medley's letter arrived. There were plans in his head now ripe for execution, but other parties must be consulted and their co-operation secured. If those plans were successful, he could afford to treat with contempt any charge, from whatever quarter, of having been Harrill's accomplice in breaking down the outlet works. At the worst, it was only a case of suspicion, but at the present moment even to be arrested on suspicion would seriously discompose his plans. He congratulated himself, at all events, on having deposited the parcel mentioned in a previous chapter with his sister Lucy. It was in a safe place. Whereas, if he were taken into custody, and the parcel found in his possession, the contents would be immediately made public, and involve him in much trouble. Winthrop quitted his place of concealment at Rentworth, then, with some precipitation. But he had other objects in view, besides keeping out of the clutches of the law. He was anxious to have an interview with a gentleman we shall shortly introduce to our readers, who, if not taken into Winthrop's counsels, might make himself exceedingly disagreeable.

After crossing Rentworth Moor by an unfrequented lane or drove for cattle, Winthrop struck the hills at a point to the eastward of Beaumont House, and ascended by a steep path to an undulating down several hundred feet above the level of the sea. He pursued his course, still eastward, along the down until he reached a hedge crossing it diagonally. Forcing his way through a gap filled with dead thorn, Winthrop found himself in a long narrow road, little better than a lane, where two carriages could scarcely pass each other. He soon came to a lonely roadside inn at a point where four roads met. There was a light in the tap, and a noise of inebriated jollity. Weston looked in and perceived three or four farmers of an inferior class, and some labourers busy over beer and tobacco. He paused at the doorway and listened. Confused and noisy as the conversation was, he could make out the subject of it. The men were discussing the accident at the river Oke, the inundation of the marsh lands, Harrill's death, Clinton's narrow escape, the inquest, &c. Events of this kind are the talk of a whole neighbourhood for months. Fearful of exciting suspicion, if recognized by any one in the shabby attire he now wore, Winthrop avoided the tap-room, and making for the little bar where the liquor was served out, asked for a

quart of beer, for he was tired and thirsty after his long walk from Rentworth. The woman of the inn handed the beer with one hand, and held out the other for the money. He drank eagerly, and then, procuring a light for his pipe, turned to depart. On passing the tap-room door he heard the same conversation still going on, and, to his great discomfort, his own name as well as Harrill's was bandied to and fro in connection with the destruction of the outlet works. Drawing his hat over his eyes, Winthrop hastily quitted the house.

He turned down one of the cross-roads, walking at a rapid pace. By and by the road descended into a sequestered valley, where stood a large plain-looking building surrounded by high walls, and overshadowed by a thick grove of poplars and spruce-firs. The night was now far advanced, but the moon was shining clear; and Weston, as he gradually approached the building, could distinguish through the occasional breaks in the trees its closed windows glimmering in the moonbeams, and the gleam of a sheet of water stretching in stagnant tranquillity within a stone's throw of the house.

Arrived at the heavy wooden gate guarding the entrance to this sombre mansion, Weston tried to open it; but, finding it fast, laid hold of the foot of a hare which acted as a bellhandle, and gave a gentle pull. The bell rang with a hollow, melancholy sound, and awakened an echo in the hill. At the same time there came upon the night wind, apparently from some distant part of the building, a wild sort of yell followed by a confused clamour, such as Humboldt heard when sleeping by his watch-fire in the depths of a South American forest. It resembled the uproar of wild animals in savage contention under cover of the night, rather than the cries of human beings.

The unbarring, however, of a distant door, showed that the sound of the bell had attracted notice; and presently a small panel of the entrance gate opened, and an ill-looking face cautiously emerged through the orifice, exclaiming

"Who the d-1 are you, and what do you want?"

Weston, nothing abashed by this energetic greeting, drew from his pocket a dirty card on which a few words were written in pencil, and requested the individual on the other side of the gate to carry that to the doctor. The man took the card and presently returned, followed by a stout red-faced gentleman in a plaid dressing-gown and carpet slippers, carrying

a lantern in one hand and a meerschaum pipe, which he occasionally put to his lips, in the other.

So," said the latter gentleman, holding up the lantern in order to distinguish Weston's features. "So-very good! I have been expecting you this long time. Here, in with you!" he added, throwing open one leaf of the gate.

"And I say, Spottle-do you hear, Spottle?"

The ill-looking man, who seemed something between a waiter out of place and a ticket-of-leave man, and wore slippers in humble imitation of his master, gave the greasy hair hanging over his forehead a twitch with his finger and thumb, in token of respect, and answered

"Here, doctor, here."

"Spottle, bar the gate. And hark'ee, Spottle, draw a can of beer and put it in my surgery! I dare to say, Mr. Winthrop, you're dry after your walk."

So saying, he led the way across the garden to a small private entrance on one side of the house, leading immediately into what was termed the surgery.

The surgery was a small room communicating with the main body of the building by means of a long passage. The door opening into this passage, as well as the door opening into the garden, was partly of glass, so that the doctor could investigate whoever applied for admittance either from within or from without the building. But, in order to obviate any disagreeable sensation of publicity, a shabby red baize curtain hung before the glazed part of the doors, so as to be drawn only from the inside.

The general appearance of the surgery was that of a small druggist's shop which had been lifted up and thoroughly shaken for about ten minutes. All was in a jumble. There were shelves round the room; there were drawers, large and small; a cupboard; a high desk to write upon; a table in the middle of the room. So far so well. But the shelves, instead of containing books, for the most part contained boots and shoes. The drawers, which were labelled with a variety of learned names, contained either drugs totally different to those designated on the labels, or else nothing but heterogeneous rubbish, such as empty bottles, old toothbrushes, discarded razors, superannuated pocket-books, ends of candle, rolls of - musty medical journals, soiled gloves, broken surgical instruments, empty pomatum pots, a few human bones brown and honeycombed, loose tobacco, a canister of patent preserved

meat, a handful of red tape, and a key bugle. Some of the drawers had disappeared, and the empty recesses were filled up with physic-bottles and pill-boxes. Alongside of the boots and shoes that chiefly occupied the bookshelves, might be seen two busts, neither of which presented a very prepossessing appearance. One was the bust of a lady who, under the influence of temporary excitement, poisoned an aged mother. The other was that of a remarkable idiot who had lived and died in an adjacent village. A few pictures hung round the room, happily combining the interests of surgical science with a taste for field sports. There was an oil painting of the celebrated Sir Grimshaw Tittlebat breaking his neck by accidentally leaping his horse into a quarry. There was a masterly sketch of the well-known terrier, Viper, as he appeared when winning the famous wager his master, Lord

laid that he would kill fifty rats in ten minutes. The animal is in the act of depositing the fiftieth victim at the feet of his noble owner with an expression of proud self-complacency in his brown eye. Other sporting pictures there were, and also, as we have intimated, surgical works of art. Such as a watercolour sketch of the face of a lad before and after a successful operation for hare-lip, and several spirited illustrations of small-pox vesicles seen through a magnifying glass, handsomely framed and glazed. Over the chimneypiece, and just under the picture descriptive of Sir Grimshaw Tittlebat's melancholy fate, was a double-barrelled gun that seemed in tolerable working order; on the chimneypiece itself, a long procession of physic-bottles, flanked by a canister of gunpowder on one side and on the other by a bottle of Cognac brandy. The cupboard, the door of which was partly open, appeared to contain wearing apparel. Upon the table in the middle of the room were scattered books and papers, letters answered and unanswered, a tumbler of brandy and water, a tray spread with bread and cheese, cucumber and onions. The writingdesk, which was deep, contained inside a jug and basin, and was in point of fact a washing-stand.

The doctor having ushered Weston, or Winthrop, as it will now be convenient to term him, into this apartment, and carefully shut and bolted the door into the garden and closed the shutter, pushed a seat towards him. He himself sat down in an easy-chair, formerly used as a dentist's operating chair

Dr. Crayfoot was a man of lively temperament, and, though his business with Winthrop was of some importance, he be