from an invisible man, with a gruff voice,
to throw it over the garden-wall and to go
away immediately after, unless he wanted to
have his head broken.

Mr. Nixon, to whom Leonard immediately
sent word of what had happened, volunteered
to go to Bayswater the same evening, and
make an attempt to see Mr. Treverton on
Mr. and Mrs. Frankland's behalf. He found
Timon of London more approachable than
he had anticipated. The misanthrope was,
for once in his life, in a good humour. This
extraordinary change in him had been
produced by the sense of satisfaction which he
experienced in having just turned Shrowl out
of his situation, on the ground that his
master was not fit company for him after
having committed such an act of folly as
giving Mrs. Frank land back her forty
thousand pounds. "I told him," said Mr.
Treverton, chuckling over his recollection of
the parting-scene between his servant and
himself. "I told him that I could not possibly
expect to merit his continued approval after
what I had done, and that I could not think
of detaining him in his place, under the
circumstances. I begged him to view my
conduct as leniently as he could, because the
first cause that led to it was, after all, his
copying the plan of Porthgenna, which
guided Mrs. Frankland to the discovery in
the Myrtle Room. I congratulated him on
having got a reward of five pounds for being
the means of restoring a fortune of forty
thousand; and I bowed him out with a
polite humility that half drove him mad.
Shrowl and I have had a good many tussles
in our time: he was always even with me till
to-day, and now I've thrown him on his back
at last!"

Although Mr Treverton was willing to
talk of the defeat and dismissal of Shrowl as
long as the lawyer would listen to him, he
was perfectly unmanageable on the subject of
Mrs. Frankland, when Mr. Nixon tried to
turn the conversation to that topic. He
would hear no messages—he would give no
promise of any sort for the future. All that
he could be prevailed on to say about himself
and his own projects, was, that he intended
to give up the house at Eayswater and to
travel again for the purpose of studying
human nature, in different countries, on a
plan that he had not tried yet—the plan of
endeavouring to find out the good that there
might be in people as well as the bad. He said
the idea had been suggested to his mind by
his anxiety to ascertain whether Mr. and
Mrs. Frankland were perfectly exceptional
human beings or not. At present, he was
disposed to think that they were, and that
his travels were not likely to lead to anything
at all remarkable in the shape of a satisfactory
result. Mr. Nixon pleaded hard for
something in the shape of a friendly message
to take back, along with the news of his
intended departure. The request produced
nothing but a sardonic chuckle, followed by
this parting speech, delivered to the lawyer at
the garden-gate.

"Tell those two amazing people," said
Timon of London, "that I may give up my
travels in disgust when they least expect it;
and that I may possibly come and look at
them again, for the sake of getting one
satisfactory sensation more out of the lamentable
spectacle of humanity before I die."

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.—THE DAWN
OF A NEW LIFE.

FOUR days afterwards, Rosamond and
Leonard and Uncle Joseph met together in
the cemetery of the church at Porthgenna.

The earth to which we all return, had
closed over Her: the weary pilgrimage of
Sarah Leeson had come to its quiet end at
last. The miner's grave from which she had
twice plucked in secret her few memorial
fragments of grass, had given her the home,
in death, which, in life, she had never
known. The roar of the surf was stilled to
a low murmur before it reached the place of
her rest; and the wind that swept joyously
over the open moor, paused a little when it
met the old trees that watched over the
graves, and wound onward softly through
the myrtle hedge that held them all embraced
alike in its circle of lustrous green.

Some hours had passed since the last words
of the burial service had been read. The
fresh turf was heaped already over the
mound, and the old headstone with the
miner's epitaph on it had been raised once
more in its former place at the head of the
grave. Rosamond was reading the inscription
softly to her husband. Uncle Joseph had
walked a little apart from them while she
was thus engaged, and had knelt down by
himself at the foot of the mound. He was
fondly smoothing and patting the newly-laid
turf, as he had often smoothed Sarah's hair
in the long past days of her youth,—as he
had often patted her hand in the after-time,
when her heart was weary and her hair was
grey.

"Shall we add any new words to the old
worn letters as they stand now? " said
Rosamond, when she had read the inscription
to the end. " There is a blank space left on
the stone. Shall we fill it, love, with the
initials of my mother's name, and the date of
her death? I feel something in my heart
which seems to tell me to do that, and to do
no more."

"So let it be, Rosamond," said her husband.
"That short and simple inscription is the
fittest and the best."

She looked away, as he gave that answer,
to the foot of the grave, and left him for a
moment to approach the old man. " Take
my hand, Uncle Joseph," she said, and
touched him gently on the shoulder. "Take
my hand, and let us go back together to
the house."