BLACK SHEEP!
By THE AUTHOR of "LAND AT LAST," "KISSING THE ROD,'
&c. &c.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER XVI. STRONG AS DEATH.

UNSPEAKABLE terror laid its paralysing grasp
upon Harriet; upon her heart, which ceased, it
seemed to her, to beat; upon her limbs, which
refused to obey the impulse of her will. Alone
she stood upon the platform, long after the train
liad disappeared, and thought failed her with
the power of movement; a blank fell upon her.
A porter addressed ber, but she stared stupidly
in his face, and made no reply.

"The lady's ill," the man said to another.
"I had better take her to the waiting-room,
and fetch a cab. If you'll come this way,
ma'am"

Then Harriet's faculties awoke with a start.
"No, thank you," she said; " I must get home."
And she walked swiftly and steadily away. Two
of the superior officials were talking together
close to the door through which she had to
pass, and she heard one of them say:

"Very quietly done, if it was so; and I'm
pretty sure it was; I couldn't be mistaken in
Tatlow."

The words conveyed no meaning, no alarm
to Harriet. She went on, and out into the
crowded street. She walked a long way before
she felt that she could bear the restraint, the
sitting still implied by driving in any vehicle.
But when she reached Tokenhouse-yard, and
found that nothing was known there of Routh,
that no message had been received from him
since he had left that evening, she got into a
cab and went home. No news there, no
message, no letter. Nothing for her to do but wait,
to wait as patiently as she could, while the
servants speculated upon the queer state of affairs,
commented upon " master's" absence on the
preceding night, and hoped he had not "bolted"
—-a proceeding which, they understood was not
uncommon in the case of gentlemen of Routh's
anomalous and dim profession. Nothing for her
to do but to wait, nothing but the hardest of
all tasks, the most agonising of all sufferings.
And this was the night which was to have
brought her, with utter despair for herself,
rest. Rest of body, which she had never so
sorely needed, and had never felt so impossible
of attainment. Her iron strength and endurance
were gone now. Her whole frame ached, her
nerves thrilled like the strings of a musical
instrument, a terrible interior distraction and
hurry came over her at intervals, and seemed
to sweep away her consciousness of reality
without deadening her sense of suffering. She
did not now wonder whether she was going
mad; since she had known the very, very worst
of her own fate, that fear had entirely left her.
She wondered now whether she was dying.
Wondered, with some curiosity, but no fear;
wondered, with a vague feeling of the strangeness
of the irruption of utter nothingness, into
such a chaos of suffering and dread as life had
become to her. There would be rest, but not
the consciousness of it; she would no more
exist. A little while ago she would have shrunk
from that, because love remained to her; but
now—- if she could but know the worst, know
the truth, know that he could not be saved,
or that he was safe, she would not care how
soon she ceased to be one of the facts of
the universe. She had never mattered much;
she did not much matter now. But these
thoughts crossed her mind vaguely and rarely;
for the most part it was abandoned to the
tumultuous agony of her ignorance and
suspense. Still no letter, no message. The time
wore on, and it was nine o'clock when Harriet
heard a ring at the door, and a man's voice
asking to see Mrs. Routh. It was not a voice
she knew; and even while she eagerly hoped
the man might have come to her from Routh,
she trembled at the thought that he might be
the bearer of a communication from George
Dallas, for whose silence she had been thankful,
but unable to account.

The man was a clerk from Mr. Lowther's
office, and his errand was to deliver to Mrs.
Routh a letter, "on very important business,"
he said, which he had directions to give into
her own hands. He executed his commission,
retired promptly, and Harriet was left alone to
find the solution of all her doubts, the termination
of all her suspense, in Jim Swain's letter.

The approaches to the Mansion House police-
court, and the precincts of the court itself,
were densely crowded. All sorts of rumours