WRECKED IN PORT
A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR of "BLACK SHEEP."

BOOK II.
CHAPTER VI. THE RUBICON.

Of course Walter Joyce was a hero of
heroes for days after the ice-accident.
Lady Hetherington for the time being
threw off every semblance of insolence and
patronage, complimented him in the highest
terms on his bravery and presence of mind,
and assured him that he had established
a claim upon their gratitude which they
could never repay. Lord Hetherington was
visibly affected, and had great difficulty
in thanking his sister's preserver in
anything like a coherent manner, lapsing into
wild outbursts of " Don't you know!"
and explaining that it would be impossible
for him to express the feelings and that
kind of thing, under which he laboured.
The gentlemen from the barracks, who had
hitherto regarded " old Hetherington's secretary-
fellow" as a person utterly unworthy
of notice, began to think that they had
been mistaken. Young Patey sent a short
account of the incident to the sporting
paper of which he was an esteemed
correspondent, and made a mental note to ask
Joyce to play in a football match which was
about to come off, and of which he had the
direction. Colonel Tapp not merely assisted
in carrying Joyce's senseless body to the
tent, whereby he became much damped
with drippings, which he nobly ignored, but
sent off one of the men for the surgeon
of the depot, and evinced an amount of
interest and attention, very rare in the self-
contained old warrior. Mr. Biscoe said
very little indeed; he had been the only
person close to the ridge of the broken
ice, and he might have heard what Lady
Caroline whispered in Joyce's ear, and he
might have formed his own opinion of how
matters stood from what he saw then.
But he said nothing. His lips wreathed
into a peculiar smile two or three times
in the course of the evening, but nothing
escaped them, and as he was smoking his
after-dinner cigar in his study, he chuckled
in a manner which was not to be accounted
for by the perusal of anything in the
Guardian which he was supposed to be
reading, more especially as he dropped his
eyeglass, laid down the paper, and rubbed
his hands with intense enjoyment. Just
before he dropped asleep, he said, " It's
a thousand pities Joyce is not in orders!
He'd have had Chudleigh Rectory when
old Whiting goes, as safe as possible:
old Whiting can't live long, and
Chudleigh must be worth twelve hundred a
year!"

"Mr. Joyce have Chudleigh? Why
should he have had Chudleigh? What makes
you think that, Robert?" asked the partner
of his joys, from the neighbouring pillow.

"Ah! what indeed?" was all the answer
Robert made, and was snoring in an
instant.

What did Lady Caroline herself say?
Very little. She had a slight access of
fever for three days, and kept her room for
a week. The first time Joyce saw her was
in the library where he was at work. She
came across the room with outstretched
hand, and in a few very simple words told
him she owed her life to him, and had
come to tell him so, and to thank him for
it. She was looking wonderfully beau-
tiful; Joyce thought he had never seen her
to such advantage. The usual pallor of her
cheeks was relieved by a deep rose flush,
her violet eyes were more than ever
luminous, and she had departed from her usual