"George has never seen her, I fancy, as he never
mentioned her to me."

She had some time to wait for the train, and
she went into the waiting-room. But she found
it already occupied by some cheery, chatty
women and children, returning from a holiday
excursion. Their idle talk, their careless laughter,
jarred with her mood; the children looked
askance at her, and hushed their prattle; the
women drew close together on the hard high
leather bench which lined the room, a solemn
mockery of a divan, and moderated their tones
to a prim gentility. Harriet perceived the effect
her presence produced, smiled slowly, and went
out again upon the platform, which she paced
from end to end, until the train came up, listening
idly to the raised voices and renewed laughter
which reached her through the open door.

When all the other passengers had taken their
places, Harriet got into a carriage which had
no other occupant, and so travelled up to
London alone.

Routh was in the house when she reached
the Tavistock, and was surprised at her speedy
return. She told him how the intelligence she
had heard on her arrival at Amherst had
simplified her task of investigation. She made her
narrative as brief as possible, she spoke in
a cold measured voice which had become
habitual to her, and which filled Routh with
intense concealed irritation; and she never looked
at him until she had concluded.

"I'll post the letter from the old fellow at
once, then," said Routh; "it's only a couple of
days late, and Dallas is too careless to notice
that. When you write—you'd better not do it
for a day or so, lest he might take it into his
head to suspect you of a motive—you can tell
him about our move."

Harriet acquiesced, and changed the subject
to their new residence, a furnished house in
Mayfair. She would go there on the morrow,
she said, and arrange all their little property.
Had everything been removed from South
Molton-street?

Everything. Routh had seen to it himself,
and had employed the boy who was always
about there.

"Ay," said Harriet, dreamily, for she was
thinking of the time, gone for ever, when she
had been happy in the home she had left
without one regret or hope. " What of him?"

"Nothing that I can make out," answered
Routh, irritably. "But I hate the sort of
half-recollection I seem to have of him. There's
something in my mind connected with him, and
I can't disentangle it."

Harriet looked up at her husband in some
surprise, and turned very pale. She had a
painful, an indelible remembrance connected
with the first time she had seen Jim Swain. But
Routh knew nothing of that; so she said nothing;
she made no effort to aid his memory. She
would avoid the torture when she could.
Besides, she was utterly weary in body and in
spirit.

Mr. Carruthers's letter reached George Dallas
not exactly duly, indeed, but after a delay which
would have astonished and exasperated the
writer, had he known it, to the last degree.

Stewart Routh and Harriet were very much
superior to George Dallas in many mental
attributes, and in particular in cunning; but they
were incapable of understanding the young man
on certain points. One of these points was his
love for his mother, with its concomitants of
remorse, repentance, and resolution. Not
comprehending this mixed feeling, they made a
serious miscalculation. The day or two which
Harriet allowed to intervene before she wrote
the letter which was to prolong George's
absence, exactly sufficed to bring him to
England.

MY ORDERLY.

LET me first state that this Orderly of mine
(No. 1) is a strong, stout, apparently unsentimental
fellow. For the rest, an honester or a
braver man never breathed. After some
hardships and dangers encountered during the day,
we were sitting round a large fire of sandalwood,
a luxury you can't afford in England.
Lying upon the ground at night, half starved by
day, we can often enjoy a fire that our Queen
might envy; for this wood, when burning, gives
out a delicious odour.

And now My Orderly (No. 1) speaks.

"I had a mate in Californey. I won't tell
his surname, sir. Many bad characters were
there, and for self-defence Harry and I kept
much to ourselves. So I got to know him well,
and to love him well too, for he was a man in
every way. We were very fortunate, and made
a pile, when one day Harry said to me:

"' Tom, old man, I'll go home and marry
Peggy.'

"This brought me up standing, for I didn't
see how I could part with him. I took the
pipe out of my mouth and looked at him without
speaking. I think he saw how it was, for
he said immediately:

"'I'll bring her out, you know, old fellow,
to whatever part of Australey you go to, as
we're going to leave this.'

"'Not on my account, Harry, I says.'

"'No,' says he, 'but on my own account;
on Peggy's account. Old man, I know you, and
we don't part so easy.' Ah, he were so
good-hearted, were Harry.

"Well, sir, the short and the long of it was,
that we squared up. I saw him on board ship
in no time—for it was a long engagement with
Peggy—and I helped him to hurry away. This
was, I think, in '48 or '49. I had told him I
was bound for Sydney, and to direct letters
to the post-office there. I went off to
Sydney, had a try at the Bathurst diggins;
came down after a long while and found
a letter waiting for me from Harry. He
wasn't an educated man, sir, but I declare I
have read in grand books things not half so
good as what I have read in his letters. He