But his face was more truthful than his lips;
and Tell saw plainly that something was very
far wrong in spite of his denial, and that young
Mr. Grantley was in for it, whatever he had
been doing.  He did not suspect anything very
bad.  Canstow was by no means an immaculate
place, and there were offences and offenders
enough as times went; but it was not to be
supposed that a young gentleman like Mr. Watts
had stolen a bank-note out of his cousin's
drawer.  Young gentlemen living in grand
houses do not do such things; crime passes
them by somehow; and the police exercise their
functions very much in proportion to the yearly
income.  The utmost the man imagined was
that Grantley had broken into a sum which Mr
Rashleigh had desired him to keep intact; and
as it was well known that the master of
Newlands had a high temper of his own and liked
to be obeyed, that was quite enough to put him
out, and to make his face grow so white and
his thin lips so pale.  At all events, wherever
the fault lay, the lad was in for it, thought Tell;
not without a kindly feeling of regret for the
evil hour at hand.  For Grantley was a general
favourite in Canstow, and most people there
wished him well.

Home came John Rashleigh in a frame of
mind more easily imagined than described.
Things had gone crossly with him for the last
few hours; and John Rashleigh was not the
man to bear with the crossness of circumstance
patiently.  Hope's extravagance had annoyed
him; partly because some other of his money
matters had gone wrong at the same time; and,
like most proud men, the merest suspicion of
possible embarrassment galled him terribly;
then he was sorry at Grantley's leaving, and
vexed with himself for being sorry; for what
better could a poor relation do? and if he had
made himself useful, so that he, John Rashleigh
of Newlands, felt that he should be "quite lost"
without him, why, that was only the lad's duty
and what ought to have been, and he was worse
than absurd to feel the least pain at his going.
Then the magistrate's business had been
worrying him to-day; and he had been on one side
of an opinion and his brothers had been on the
other, and he had been forced to give in; which
had annoyed him not a little; so that, when
added to all this accumulation of disturbing
influences was the sudden conviction that he
had been robbed, and that too by the boy he
had loved and cherished more than he had
ever openly acknowledged, we can understand
in what a whirlwind of fiery wrath he rode
full speed through Canstow and up to
Newlands, not ten minutes after Grantley had
returned.

"Grantley!" he called out as soon as he
entered, and still standing in the hall; "Grant-
ley Watts, where are you?"

"Here, sir," said Grantley coming out of
the drawing-room, where he had been giving
Hope an account of his proceedings, and
emptying his pockets of her commissions.

"Where did you get that twenty-pound note
you changed just now at Tell's?" shouted John
Rashleigh.

Grantley was silent.

"Come, sir, I want an answer!" cried his
cousin.  "Looking down and keeping a demure
silence will not suit me; I want a simple
answer to a straightforward question.  Where
did you get that twenty-pound note from?  I
left it in my desk when I went to Canstow
to-day, and my desk was locked; whoever got it
forced the lock or opened it with a false key.
It was either you or some one else.  Who was
it, Grantley?"

Grantley still made no answer; the truth was
beginning to break upon him.

"I do not think any one in my household
would do such a thing; two hours ago I should
not have thought that you would have done it;
and even yet, suspicious as the whole
circumstance is, even yet I will accept any explanation
that will clear you, else I must hold you
reponsible for the theft."

"I did not steal it.  I have committed no
theft," said Grantley, looking straight into his
cousin's eyes.

"Oh"! you may dislike the word, but that I
do not care for," said Mr. Rashleigh,
disdainfully. "I have always remarked that people
shrink more from a word than a deed, and think
themselves especially ill-used if called by the
name of their crime.  If you are not a thief, what
are you then?  If you did not steal it, how
did you get it?"

"I did not steal it," was all that Grantley
could say, repeating himself monotonously.

John Rashleigh was an impatient man as
well as a proud and high-tempered one.  At
Grantley's second asseveration he raised his
hand and struck the youth across the face.

"Coward!" he said, "have you not even the
bad courage of crime?  Dare you not confess
what, by confession, would have been only a
fault?  If you had told me frankly how and
why you had come to do such a thing, I could
have understood it as a boyish liberty, and have
forgiven it, but now I have only one way of
dealing with it —as a crime."

When he struck him Grantley involuntarily
raised his own hand; but a thought came across
him, and he retreated a step or two and dropped
his guard.

"It takes the remembrance of all you have
done for me, Mr. Rashleigh, and more than
even this, to make me able to bear your
insults!" he said, excitedly, his boyish face
convulsed with contending passions.

His voice, harsh and broken as it was, had
somehow a different ring in it to that of guilt,
and Mr. Rashleigh had not been a magistrate
for so many years, and accustomed to all
shades of criminals, not to know something
of the human voice, and what it betokened
under accusation.  Grantley's startled him —
so did the proud flushed face with the honest
eyes looking so frankly, and the indignation
rather than fear upon it —and made him half
afraid that he had been too hasty.  But men