rule was to be disturbed. He had his family
there, kept up part of the garden, sold the fruit,
and did very well indeed. Old servants, indeed!
The inconvenient side of that relation has been
often dwelt on as almost comic; but now we have
become the old servants, and are ungrateful and
thankless to them, for all their kindness while
they stayed with us.

Old Wilkes, however, was a good soul. There
was a fire burning in the study. "Well, Mr.
Gilbert," he said that night, when he had come
up to gossip a little, "I mind this room nigh
twenty year ago, on that night when the master,
poor man, heard tell of you and the curate's
little daughter, and sent me out to look for you
and bring you in here."

"I remember it, Wilkes," said West, looking
steadily in the fire, " and it has risen before me
often since. It was a terrible night."

He sat pensively, looking at the picture
before him; and yet in Dieppe, when in the
little French rooms, when the scene came back
on him, his sister had seen him rise abruptly,
and almost rush away to walk. If it would
not leave him, he might fly from it. She
always knew what this meant. There was a
change now.

"It was a sin and a shame, and I told him
so," said the old servant." It was no use,
and it had gone past curing. Better have
married her, though she were a beggarly
curate's daughter, than—"

"Than have her die so miserably, Wilkes,"
he said.

"You might have done it, Mr. Gilbert, I
often thought since. The old master was
quick-tempered, but he'd have got over it in
a year or two."

"No, never, never, Wilkes," said West,
getting up to walk about. " I knew him, too.
He swore to me on that old Bible which he
was always reading, that if I went on with
it, he would make it his life's work to hunt
her and her father to the death; and he could
do it, you know. You remember poor Holden,
his tenant?"

"Ay, sir; he worked him well enough."

"I thought it for the best. I meant well,
though I know what people said—that I gave
her up, poor child, to save my estate."

"Ay; they said that, sure enough."

"I was sure they did. I was innocent,
Wilkes; but I suffered for it. Eighteen years
was a long atonement."

"So it were; so it were."

"And if I had only waited, or gained a
little time—just four years more, when he
died—"

"Well," said the old man, "I'm after
thinking, though, wouldn't she have been living
to this moment, but for that? So you see
that it's a long time after all; and givin' up
your whole life, Mr. Gilbert, in these furrin
parts to repentance. Ah, the poor old place;
it will never have the family in it again. And,
indeed, so best, so best; for now it's not fit, and
it's a scandal, so it is, the way it's in."

West turned to look at him, smiling. "Well,
Wilkes, my old friend, I have some news for
you. There has been enough of misery and
melancholy, and I see no use in going on with
that. Eighteen years is long enough, surely;
and if we were to die a thousand times, we
can't mend what is past. I begin to think
we can show grief and feeling better by doing
our duties than by moping, and pining, and
idling. So do you know, Wilkes, what has
brought me down?"

"Oh, how can I say, Mr. Gilbert? Maybe
this, and maybe that; maybe one thing, maybe
t'other."

He was growing dry and uneasy. Mr. West
did not see it.

"What do you say to this news, my good
old friend? We shall be coming back here,
and shall open the old place once more. Clear
away all this; pull down, and put in thorough
repair. What do you say to that?"

"Repair!" said the old servant, testily;
"why, it would take forty-five thousand pounds
—no less—to do that."

This number was his favourite estimate of
expense, size, time—any object that he had seen
being forty-five times the height of that house,
or as far off as forty-five times the road from
here to London. But he did not receive the
news with welcome.

"Why, it will take forty-five men, no less,
every day—  every day—for a year. Repairs,
indeed! You may as well pull every stone of
it to the ground!"

"No fear of that, Wilkes. A clever fellow
is coming down to-morrow to look at it. He
knows what to do, and will take care that
nothing shall be touched but what is necessary.
We shall turn in the workmen, too. Lots of
employment for the labourers about. Clear the
place in time; give these trees breathing-
room."

"Then there's few labourers you'd get about
here. Since the labour was stopped fifteen
years ago, who was to employ them?"

"They'll come fast enough, never fear, Wilkes,
too many of them, I'm afraid. And then for the
furnishing and decorating; and you, Wilkes,
shall look after it. What would you like to be,
now? Steward, butler, what? Choose
yourself, now."

"Oh, that's all well enough, Mr. Gilbert.
Where would the like of me get my years and
strength for that? But see here, Mr. Gilbert,"
continued the old man, slowly, "what's this
for? Is it that you're bringing home some one
—a slip of a creature?"

"I don't say that, Wilkes. Why, wouldn't
you like one of the old stock to be here?"

"It's a foolish thing, and always was a
foolish thing," went on the old man, " and
leads to no good. The keeper up yonder
there, a man of a good fifty, took up with a
child of twenty, only two year ago, and where is
he now? He's there; but where is she?"

"My good old friend," said West, a little
provoked, "you are getting foolish, and talk