he opened the window, and glared at the doctor's
notice.

At this moment he himself was a picture:
not unlike those half cleaned portraits the
picture restorers hang out as specimens of their
art.

"Insolent interfering fool," he muttered, and
began to walk the room in agitation. After a
while he made a strong effort, shaved the other
half, and dressed slowly, thinking hard all the
time. The result was, he went out before
breakfast (which he had not done for years),
and visited the " White Lion." One of Sampson's
posters had just been stuck up near the
inn; he quietly pulled it down and then entered
the yard; and had a serious talk with the
squinting ostler.

On his return, Jane was waiting breakfast.
The first word to him was: "Papa, have you
seen?"

"What, the Reward!" said he, indifferently.
" Yes, I noticed it at our door as I came home."

Jane said it was a very improper and most
indelicate interference in their affairs. And
went on to say with heightened colour: "I
have just told Peggy to take it down."

"Not for the world!" cried Mr. Hardie,
losing all his calmness real or feigned; and he
rang the bell hastily. On Peggy's appearing,
he said anxiously, " I do not wish that Notice
interfered with."

"I shouldn't think of touching it without
your orders, sir," said she, quietly, and shot
him a feline glance from under her pale lashes.

Jane coloured, and looked a little mortified:
but on Peggy's retiring, Mr. Hardie explained
that, whether judicious or not, it was a friendly
act of Dr. Sampson's; and to pull down his
notice would look like siding with the boy
against those he had injured: " Besides," said
he, " why should you and I burk inquiry? Ill
as he has used me, I am his father, and not
altogether without anxiety. Suppose those
doctors should be right about him, you know?"

Jane had for some time been longing to call
at Albion Villa and sympathise with her friend;
and now curiosity was superadded; she burned
to know whether the Dodds knew of, or
approved this placard. She asked her father
whether he thought she could go there with
propriety. " Why not?" said he, cheerfully,
and with assumed carelessness.

In reality it was essential to him that Jane
should visit the Dodds. Surrounded by pitfals,
threatened with a new and mysterious assailant
in the eccentric, but keen and resolute Sampson,
this artful man, who had now become a very
Machiavel— constant danger and deceit had so
sharpened and deepened his great natural
abilities— was preparing amongst other defences
a shield; and that shield was a sieve; and that
sieve was his daughter. In fact, ever since
his return, he had acted and spoken at the
Dodds through Jane, but with a masterly
appearance of simplicity and mere confidential
intercourse. At least I think this is the true
clue to all his recent remarks.

Jane, a truthful, unsuspicious girl, was all the
fitter instrument of the cunning monster. She
went and called at Albion Villa, and was received
by Edward, Mrs. Dodd being up-stairs with
Julia, and in five minutes she had told him what
her father, she owned, had said to her in
confidence. " But," said she, " the reason I repeat
these things is to make peace, and that you may
not fancy there is any one in our house so cruel,
so unchristian, as to approve Alfred's perfidy.
Oh, and papa said candidly he disliked the match,
but then he disliked this way of ending it far
more."

Mrs. Dodd came down in due course, and
kissed her; but told her Julia could not see
even her at present. " I think, dear," said she,
" in a day or two she will see you; but no one
else: and for her sake we shall now hurry our
departure from this place, where she was once
so happy."

Mrs. Dodd did not like to begin about Alfred;
but Jane had no such scruples; she inveighed
warmly against his conduct, and, ere she left
the house, had quite done away with the faint
suspicion Sampson had engendered, and brought
both Mrs. Dodd and Edward back to their
original opinion, that the elder Hardie had
nothing on earth to do with the perfidy of the
younger.

Just before dinner a gentleman called on
Edward, and proved to be a policeman in
plain clothes. He had been sent from the office
to sound the ostler at the " White Lion," and, if
necessary, to threaten him. The police knew,
though nobody else in Barkington did, that this
ostler had been in what rogues call trouble,
twice, and, as the police can starve a man of the
kind by blowing on him, and can reward him by
keeping dark, he knows better than withhold
information from them.

However, on looking for this ostler, he had
left his place that very morning; had decamped
with mysterious suddenness.

Here was a puzzle.

Had the man gone without noticing the
reward? Had somebody outbid the reward? or
was it a strange coincidence, and did he after
all know nothing?

The police thought it was no coincidence, and
he did know something; so they had telegraphed
the London office to mark him down.

Edward thanked his visitor; but, on his
retiring, told his mother he could make neither
head nor tail of it; and she only said, "We seem
surrounded by mystery."

Meantime, unknown to these bewildered ones,
Greek was meeting Greek only a few yards off.

Mr. Hardie was being undermined by a man
of his own calibre, one too cautious to
communicate with the Dodds, or any one else, till
his work looked ripe.

The game began thus: a decent mechanic,
who lodged hard by, lounging with his pipe near
the gate of Musgrove Cottage, offered to
converse with old Betty: she gave him a rough
answer; but with a touch of ineradicable vanity
must ask Peggy if she wanted a sweetheart,