BLACK SHEEP!

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "KISSING THE ROD,"
                      &c. &c.

                     BOOK II.
  CHAPTER III. THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

MR. CARRUTHERS was an early man; no danger
of any skulking among the numerous hands
which found employment on the Poynings
estate. If the eye of the master be indeed the
spur of the servant, Mr. Carruthers's dependents
had quite enough of that stimulant. He made
his rounds every morning at an hour which the
indoor servants, who were obliged to have breakfast
ready on his return, considered heathenish,
and the out-door servants declared savoured
of slave-driving. Mrs. Brookes knew that she
should have no difficulty in procuring a private
interview with her mistress on the morning
following Mr. Dalrymple's visit, as an hour and a
half always elapsed between Mr. Carruthers's
leaving the house and his wife's ringing for her
maid. The old woman looked worn and weary
and very old, as she peered from behind a red-
cloth door, which shut off the corridor on which
Mr. Carruthers's dressing-room opened from the
grand gallery, and watched her master take his
creaking way down the staircase, looking as he
went more full of self-importance than usual,
and treading more heavily, as if the weight of
the Home Office communication had got into
his boots.

When he had disappeared, and she had heard
the click of the lock as he opened the great
door and went out into the pure fresh morning
air, Mrs. Brookes emerged from behind the
partition door, and softly took the way to Mrs.
Carruthers's bedroom. The outer door was
slightly open, the heavy silken curtain within
hung closely over the aperture. The old woman
pushed it gently aside, and, noiselessly crossing
the room, drew the window curtain, and let in
sufficient light to allow her to see that Mrs.
Carruthers was still sleeping. Her face, pale,
and even in repose bearing a troubled expression,
was turned towards the old woman, who
seated herself in an arm-chair beside the bed,
and looked silently and sadly on the features,
whose richest bloom and earliest sign of fading
she had so faithfully watched.

"How am I to tell her?" she thought. "How
am I to make her see what I see, suspect what
I suspect? and yet she must know all, for the
least imprudence, a moment's forgetfulness,
would ruin him. How am I to tell her?"

The silver bell of a little French clock on the
chimney-piece rang out the hour melodiously,
but its warning struck upon the old woman's
ear menacingly. There was much to do, and
little time to do it in; she must not hesitate
longer. So she laid her withered, blanched old
hand upon the polished, ivory-white fingers of
the sleeper, lying with the purposelessness of
deep sleep upon the coverlet, and addressed her
as she had been used to do in her girlhood, and
her early desolate widowhood, when her humble
friend had been well-nigh her only one.

"My dear," she said, "my dear." Mrs.
Carruthers's hand twitched in her light grasp;
she turned her head away with a troubled sigh,
but yet did not wake. The old woman spoke
again: "My dear, I have something to say to
you."

Then Mrs. Carruthers awoke fully, and to an
instantaneous comprehension that something
was wrong. All her fears, all her suspicions of
the day before, returned to her mind in one
flash of apprehension, and she sat up white and
breathless.

"What is it, Ellen? Has he found out?
Does he know?"

"Who? What do you mean?"

"Mr. Carruthers. Does he know George
was here?"

"God forbid," said the old woman, in a
trembling tone.

She felt the task she had before her almost
beyond her power of execution. But her
mistress's question, her instinctive fear, had given
her a little help.

"No," she said, "he knows nothing, and
God send he may neither know nor suspect
anything about our dear boy; but you must be
quiet now and listen to me, for I must have said
my say before Dixon comes—she must not find
me here."

"Why are you here?" asked Mrs.
Carruthers, who had sat up in bed, and was now
looking at the old woman, with a face which
had no more trace of colour than the pillow
from which it had just been raised. "Tell me,.
Ellen; do not keep me in suspense. Is
anything wrong about George? It must concern
him, whatever it is."