though it might not have expected to receive
yet his fingers did not fail to close upon with
care. And no sooner was that strong hand
locked upon its secret, than the legs of our
little devil became fit for further exercise; and
with a sudden unearthly shriek, and a spring,
he was whirling to the other end of the room.
Lady Humphrey's eyes might he sharp, and
Mr. Campion's might roll knowingly, but they
should never see the writing on that slip of
folded paper. They did not resist the natural
impulse to turn with the crowd, and look after
the tumbling imp; and when their gaze was
released from the momentary obligation of
following a popular absurdity, and returned to its
more serious occupation, Sir Archie Munro had
passed out of their ken.

He had taken his way to a quiet room where
he could read his letter unobserved. And here
are all its contents:

"I find that we are watched," said the note,
"and so I fail to keep my appointment. Come
to me at half-past four. I have made arrangements
which will prevent any risk to you. For
me it is all risk; but I sail for France
tomorrow. I cannot leave without trying my
personal influence, without praying you with
my voice, in the name of God, to change your
mind, and give us your help in the great coming
struggle of our country. Eat this when you
have read, if there be not a light at hand.
"Yours, full of hope,
"THEOBALD WOLFE TONE."

There was a lamp on a stand close by, and
Sir Archie held the paper to the flame. The
flash which consumed it made Hester look up;
for this was the room in which Hester had been
left sitting, It was deserted now by all but
herself. One and another came, and looked
into it now and again, and passed on. Hester
glanced up, and saw the stern face and the
burning letter. Sir Archie, even before holding
the paper to the light, had observed the
picture in the corner, and marked it. The
shower of golden hair and the quaint little red
cloak had first caught his notice as a matter of
colour; a moment later it was the pale troubled
face, and the downward abstracted gaze, the
patient shadow of fatigue or sorrow round the
eyes, the helpless clinging together of the
hands, that had left the impress of a poem upon
his mind. He had considered its depth and
truth a little, even from under the pressure of
his own weighty thoughts; been conscious of a
latent question under the surface of his own
anxiety of the hour—was this sorrow and
piteous loneliness of spirit that he had looked
upon, or only natural physical fatigue, and the
involuntary patience of a minute's enforced
waiting?

And where had Hester's thoughts been in
the meantime, all the long hour during which
she had sat there, with that grief-struck face?
What simple, half-fledged dove of feeling, that
had been wickedly lured to try its unformed
wings, was she anxiously bringing back again
to the safety of its nest? What grains of bitter
husk was she winnowing in her heart that sweet
wholesome material for the daily bread of life
might be found lying at the bottom, for her
storing when the folly of the chaff should have
blown by? There are little storms for the very
young, which if their purifying tyranny be but
tolerated with meekness will nip all the buds
of selfishness in the garden of the soul. And
Hester was getting strengthened for the burthen
of her future.

CHAPTER VIII. SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT.

SIR ARCHIE MUNRO had hardly passed out
of the room where Hester sat waiting, when a
person of venerable appearance, in the garb of
a pilgrim, long grey beard, brown woollen gown,
approached her leaning on his staff, and making
a most profound salutation.

"Daughter," said he in a quavering voice,
"thy party awaits thee with impatience upon
the last step of the staircase. They have
commissioned me to be thy escort to bring thee to
them, in safety. Place thy fair hand upon my
arm, and these gray hairs shall be thy protection
through the giddy crowd!"

Now it will doubtless appear that Hester was
to the last degree simple and foolish to believe
for a moment in such a style of address as the
above; and it must be allowed that in the
beginning of her days she was simple in the extreme
from many points of view. But then if it had
not been in her nature to put faith overmuch
in the well-meaning of others, this history could
never have been written. And if we would
follow her adventures we must take her as we
find her, with all her lack of smartness, her
credulity, her untimely attacks of dreaminess,
her enthusiasm. If we endure her helpless
short-comings with patience we shall find pretty
quickly how Time soon took her roughly into
training; how Experience stepped in, and with
a few puffs blew all the golden dust out of her
hazy brains, leaving them strong enough and
clear enough to do strong and skilful work in
the hour which came to put them to the test.

In the mean time, we may say for her that
she was at this moment, on this night, in this
fantastic unaccustomed scene, utterly weary in
body, terrified with loneliness, and almost
stupefied by the depression of a new trouble; a
weariness that a night's rest would cure; a
forlornness which the presence of a friend could
put to flight; a trouble that was the mere
wraith of a trouble, made up of the mists of an
unwholesome atmosphere, too low for her moral
breathing, which must be scattered in sparks of
colour by the first ray of the sunrise above
those mountain tops towards which her
unconscious feet were already stumbling. With all
of which it must still be said that the weariness
and the loneliness and the trouble were all
present in this hour to afflict her; and how was
she to know that they were things feebler than
herself, with only a small hour allotted to them
wherein to work their will upon her? She