NEVER FORGOTTEN.

PART THE SECOND.

CHAPTER, XL. CASE AGAINST MAJOR CARTER.

WHILE the hubbub goes on, and people are
asking each other in streets and clubs, "I say,
what's this business about Carter?" we may
look back some weeks to that stormy night at
Bangor, when young Doctor Jones was away, and
Miss Manuel, like an avenging angel, was sitting
before the old man, who was crouching in his
chair. She literally wrung the whole story from
him in bits and patches.

First, he recollected Major Carter, with his
wife, coming to the place, and had seen them
walking about very often. How she, he had
noticed, was so quiet and white, and always had
her timid eye fixed on the major, as if expecting
something. Her voice was gentle, and she
feared her husband. The major very often, said
the old man, came into the shop, and talked, and
talked pleasantly too, but not so much to him.
It was delightful to listen to him; he knew the
world so well. He was above them all in this
place—  miles above them.

The old man's son had just then come home,
and had begun to help in the business; and the
major fancied him a good deal more than his
father. His reverence for the major far exceeded
that of the old man's. "He can do anything,
that man," he often said to his father. "He
could be prime minister. He can turn you and
me round his finger. We are mere babies to
him." As indeed they were. And with Dr.
Watkyn, Major Carter sometimes took a walk,
though in a private direction, for he was careful,
and saving of his dignity. And young Dr.
Watkyn was heard to say often, that he would to
Heaven that man could stay for years in the
place. His words were like gold.

Presently, Mrs. Carter, always ailing, began to
become ill regularly, and the major became
changed into the most devoted of nurses.

"I was brought to see her," said the old man,
"and my son was brought too. And I will
confess that, being accustomed only to the plain,
intelligible sicknesses of our rough country people,
and my son having much the same sort of
experience, we could not make much of the matter.

The major had all the feeling in the world, and
tried to help us as well as he could; but what
could be made of a lady who was wasting and
wasting, and growing sick, and then growing well,
and then wasting again? We could only call it
consumption. At last, on one Sunday night,when
we had been at meeting——Must I tell you?"

Miss Manuel, with her eyes on the coals, said,
impassively, " Go on."

Those Welsh coals, long undermined like a
little quarry, suddenly crumbled down and made
him start. " Go on," she said again. " Finish."

"Ah, begin, you should say," he replied, "for
it is all to come yet. That night I had been
rummaging among our old jars and drugs, looking
for some calomel, and found, as you have
often found, perhaps, a heap of things that I had
no idea I had. As I was rummaging and dusting,
the major came in and sat down despondingly
upon a chair. 'Worse to-night, Jones,'
he said. ' Only think, the faithful partner, who
has held to me, come weal, come woe, for so
many years.'

"At this moment, a neighbour came in with a
long story about his wife, Jenkin, who was lying
ill, and could get no sleep at night from a herd
of cats who had their meetings at the back of his
house. ' Give me some poison, doctor,' he said.

"I recollected finding among the other things a
little strychnine, which got there I don't know
how. I gave him some, and went out to the
door with him to talk over the state of his wife,
leaving the major behind leaning his head on his
hand."

Miss Manuel slowly turned her face away
from the coals, and was looking eagerly at him.

"I only say this," said the old man, looking
restlessly from side to side. " Two days later,
the neighbour came back for more of the poison,
which had done good work, and I never could find
it. Even that night I missed one of the bottles,
but I did not know it was that one. When the
neighbour came again, and I could not find it,
something whispered me that the major had
taken it. It seemed unjust—- unreasonable—-
wicked; but the idea took possession of me."

The wind, long kept waiting, was now thundering
at the old bow-window, as if it had suddenly
found a shoulder, and was driving furiously
with that shoulder against the door.