which she locked, and no threats or entreaties
of either brother or sister could induce her to
open it again— scarcely to answer when she was
called and spoken to.

Pale, restless, seeking she knew not what, but
seeking Something, Hester wandered through
the house that night like a ghost come up from
the grave. Moving with her light noiseless
tread, and shading the candle with her hand, she
went down stairs, and into the library— her
cousin Faber's own peculiar room. Haunted
she knew not with what— lured on she knew not
to what— she opened drawers and desks and
cupboards, searching, searching for something—
that nameless Something which always had been
before her mind as one day to be found. At
last she tried a certain desk; it was locked, but
by some oversight the key had been left in the
lock, though Faber was in general both careful
and exact. She opened it, and turned the
contents— papers, trifles, letters— over and
over; but she found nothing to interest her.
She opened some little packets, and some small
boxes; but the locks of hair, and the rings, and
the lockets, and little scraps of verses they
contained, were nothing to her. At last she
fell upon a packet sealed and secured with
more than ordinary care. She broke the seals;
she cut the string; and took from the cover a
paper which she soon made out to be her mother's
certificate of marriage, a long lock of golden
hair, and the ruby ring which had been stolen
from her sister the night she was murdered.

Now she understood what had haunted her
poor bewildered brain, and what had lured
her on till she had found it; now she knew
what she had dumbly divined; and both the
past and herself were revealed to her. Quietly,
with ashen cheeks and glazed eyes, she glided
up-stairs again; the house yet in its first heavy
sleep, and she walking so softly she would not
have roused even one who watched. Still
shading the candle with her hand she stopped
at her cousin's door; she tried it, it was
unfastened; and softly opening it she glided in,
and went up to the bed where he lay sleeping.

For a moment she stood and watched him, as
he tossed his dark head restlessly on the pillow,
muttering in his sleep. Then she touched his
hand, bending her face near to his and calling
him by his name. He started up with a man's
shout of defiance; a shout that passed into a
low moan of abject terror when he saw that
ghastly face pressed so near to his, the glistening
hair streaming round it and falling on to
the bed-clothes, and the slight figure, looking
still slighter in its melancholy black, bending
over him. In one hand she held the paper, the
ring, and the lock of hair; in the other the
candle; and the light fell on the ruby and the
gold in strange fantastic brilliance.

"I told you that you were all over blood,
Faber," she said, in a low penetrating voice.
"Now I know it. Do not ask me to forgive
you; I do not forgive you."

In the morning a great cry went through the
house. Still fully dressed, and with all her
hair combed straight on her shoulders like a
parted veil of gold, Hester was found lying on
her bed, stone dead and cold and stiff. No
sign of struggle nor of any means of self-
destruction was about; no poison, no blood,
no knife, no cord: a quiet pale waxen figure,
lying as if asleep, and full of maidenly sweetness
and beauty even in its death.

The verdict was, "Died by the visitation of
God;" the medical men said "Syncope of the
spine;" and no one was ever heard to say it
was an unrighteous verdict, or that any other
could have been returned. If there was one
who knew more than the rest, he passed through
life unchallenged and unsuspected. The dead
told no tales, and the ruby ring which Faber
Todyeare always wore now, was like the dead,
and betrayed nothing.

But though Fellfoot and all the property
belonging to the two sisters came by right and
law now to Faber and Susan, and though their
ruined fortunes were repaired without the world
ever knowing that they had been endangered,
yet their prosperity brought no blessing with it.
Susan died before that year's fruits were
ripened in the Fellfoot gardens; and for all his
life after Faber Todyeare was a haunted, hunted,
broken-down man, to be met wandering about
the earth, without rest or peace or love or
home; a miserable wretch whom some called
mad, but of whom the priest who saw him die
in a lonely little village in France, said with a
long-drawn breath, as he closed his eyes: "That
man was a murderer."

NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS,
In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
"Pickwick," "Copperfleld," &c.
Now publishing, PART VIII., price 1s., of
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.
With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE.
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.

On the first of December was published, stitched in a
cover, price Fourpence,
THE
NEW CHRISTMAS NUMBER,
MRS. LIRRIPER'S LEGACY
CONTENTS:
I. MRS LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER.
II. A PAST LODGER RELATES A WILD LEGEND OF A DOCTOR.
III. ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES HIS EXPERIENCE AS A POOR RELATION.
IV. ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES WHAT LOT HE DREW AT GLUMPER HOUSE.
V. ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES HIS OWN GHOST STORY.
VI. ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES CERTAIN PASSAGES TO HER HUSBAND.
VII. MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW JEMMY TOPPED UP.