WRECKED IN PORT.

A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."

CHAPTER XII. A REMOVAL.

SOME few minutes passed before Marian
felt sufficiently recovered to move. The
attack had been so unexpected and so brutal
that she would have been perfectly paralysed
by it even if the words which the boy
had used had been the outpourings of mere
random savagery, instead of, as they
evidently were, the result of premeditated and
planned insult—insult grounded on hate,
and hate springing from fear. Marian's
quick intelligence made that plain to her
in a moment. The boy feared her, feared
that she might obtain an ascendancy over
his father, and get the old gentleman to
advance money to Mrs. Ashurst, money
that ought not to go out of the family, and
should be his at his father's death, or
perhaps fancied she was scheming to quarter
herself at Woolgreaves, and—-. Good
Heavens, could he have thought that!
Why the idea had never crossed her mind.
She dismissed it at once, not without a half
mile at the notion of the retribution she
could inflict, at the thought that the boy
had suggested to her what might be such
a punishment for himself as she had never
dreamed of.

She walked on quickly, communing with
herself. So, they had found her out, had
they? Tom's blurted warning was the
first intimation she had had that what she
knew to be the guiding purpose of her life,
the worship of, love for, intended acquisition
of money, was suspected by any, known
to any one else. No syllable on the
subject, either jestingly or reproachfully, had
ever been breathed to her before.  It was
not likely that she would have heard of it.
Her father had considered her to be
perfect, her mother had set down all her small
economies, scrapings, and hoardings which
were practised in the household, to Marian's
"wonderful management;" and however the
feminine portion of the Whicher and Croker
families might talk among themselves, their
respect for the schoolmaster and their dread
of Marian's powers of retort always
effectually prevented them from dropping any
hints at the schoolhouse.  So Marian heard
it now for the first time. Yet there was
nothing in it to be ashamed of, she thought;
if her poor father had been guided by this
sentiment his life might have been perhaps
reserved, and certainly an immense amount
of misery would have been spared to them
all.  Love of money, a desire to acquire
wealth, who should reproach her for that?
Not Mr. Creswell, of whose good opinion
she seemed to think first, for had not his
whole life been passed in the practice, and
was not his present position the result, the
example to which she could point in
defence of her creed?  Not Maud or
Gertrude Creswell, who if they had possessed
the smallest spark of independence would
have been earning their bread as
companions or governesses.  Not the people
of the village, who——. Yes, by Tom's
account, they did talk of her, but what
then?  What the people in the village
thought or said about her had never been
of the smallest interest to Marian Ashurst
when she lived among them, and was
brought into daily communion with them;
it was therefore not likely that she would
take much heed of it now, as she had made
up her mind that she and her mother must
go and live in another place, far away from
all old scenes and associations, when they
left Woolgreaves.

When they left Woolgreaves!  Hitherto