BLACK SHEEP!

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

                                       BOOK III.

CHAPTER XIV. "INFORMATION RECEIVED."

WHEN George Dallas knew that his meeting
with Clare Carruthers was imminent, he
told his uncle one of the two circumstances
of his life which he had hitherto concealed
from him. As George expected, Mr. Felton
received the communication with some seriousness.
"A little while ago, George," he said,
"this might have upset the new and good
understanding happily established between Mr.
Carruthers and yourself, but I am in hopes it
will not do so now. I think the old gentleman's
nature is fine and forgiving, when one gets
beneath the crust, and I am not afraid now.
The chance of seeing the young lady, not in his
presence, for the first time—that would have
been awkward and dangerous indeed—is most
fortunate. You must make your peace with
her in the first instance."

Enough of the old habit of trick and
expedient still adhered to George, in his
improved moral condition, to induce him to
entertain a passing thought that perhaps the
necessity for Mr. Carruthers knowing he had had
any previous acquaintance with Clare
might never arise: if she did not see that he
must be told, George need not feel himself
bound to tell him. But he rejected the
impulse after a very little while, and was ashamed
of it. When, therefore, Mr. Felton had left
George alone at Sir Thomas Boldero's house,
he had done so with intention, and without any
purpose of returning.

"Meet me at my rooms afterwards," he had
said to George. "And tell Miss Carruthers I
will take leave to call on her at Mrs. Stanhope's
this afternoon." George agreed, premising
that he must look in at The Mercury office first,
but would then be at his uncle's service. Left
alone, he had applied himself, in a condition of
extreme mental discomposure, to thinking of
wht he should say to Clare, and how he should
say it. He had almost arranged a satisfactory
programme before she came; after—well, after,
he did not speak, or look in the least like what
he had intended, and if any one had asked him
for an account of their interview (which no one
did, it was destined to be utterly forgotten and
overwhelmed in the tide of events), he would have
been quite incapable of satisfying the demand.

The interview lasted long, and when, at its
close, George Dallas put Clare Carruthers into
her cousin's carriage, her face was closely
veiled, and the little hand which lingered in
his had not yet done trembling. As he stood
on the doorstep and watched the carriage out
of sight, the young man's face was pale and
agitated, but full of deep and sacred happiness
too. An expression of resolve and hope, of
courage and power, was upon his features, such
as they had never before worn. Had he
recalled the resolution he had taken for the time
when Clare Carruthers should know Paul Ward
as George Dallas, and had he renewed it, with
fresh heart and energy, not unaided now by
circumstances, not frowned upon by fate, no
longer friendless?  However that may have
been, he carried a humbled and grateful heart
with him, and felt himself a widely different
man as he entered the dingy precincts of The
Mercury office, to what he had been the last
time he had crossed that threshold.

Mr. Cunningham was "in," and not only
could see George, but was particularly anxious
to see him.

"I was just writing to you, old fellow," he
said, leaving off shaking hands with George, and
beginning to tear up a brief and scrawly
manuscript on flimsy which lay before him. "You
have come in time to save me trouble and
fourpence sterling."

"Anything about the business I wrote to you
about?" asked George.

"Just that, sir. Of course I attended to it
at once, and put Tatlow on to it on your account.
They're said to be cautious chaps, the detectives,
and of course it wouldn't pay for them to be
said to be anything else; but I'm hanged if I
ever believed it before. You may talk of depth,
but Tatlow's unfathomable. Has the job from
you, sir, per medium of your humble servant,
and flatly declines to report progress to me;
goes in for doing business only with the
principal, and when he comes to me not a word can I
get out of him, except that he must know the
address of a certain individual named Paul Ward."

"Paul Ward!" exclaimed George.

"Yes, Paul Ward! Great fun, isn't it,
George? And I really could not resist the