William Rutland Hardwick, closing the

door.

"The old fool!" muttered Dobbs, as he shuffled through the iron gates into Lordsmill Street, where he encountered many people returning from their tramp with the soldiers.

Susan Hardwick, sitting near her bedroom window, looking in the direction of the London road, heard the people returning homewards, the sounds of their clattering feet being increased by the noise of some who wore wooden shoes, the clogs of the north answering to the French sabots.

Though the martial music was by this time awakening the enthusiasm of slumbering villages miles away, she fancied she still heard it, and she nursed the idea, in a dreamy sort of way, but with a sense of

depression rather than of grief, a feeling of humiliation and disappointment. The first shock of sorrow over, she was conscious of a feeling of mortification. Her pride and her wilfulness came to the relief of her sentiment of pity for Oliver North, and her love for him. She was angry with herself at one moment for confessing her love; the next she felt hurt at North leaving her when she had laid bare her heart to him. She never felt until now how much she wanted the advice of a mother or a sincere friend. Not that her mother would have helped her much had she been alive. She was but a poor creature, with one idea in her head, and that was full of her husband, whom she obeyed implicitly in thought and deed, and of whose family and ancestors she had a superstitious admiration.

The mill-owner's only daughter looked

out upon those tall elms that were shedding their leaves, and saw in the picture a likeness to herself. Somehow it seemed as if her hopes were falling in showers. around her, and that she would be left a wreck for the cruel winds of Fate to blow upon. A sense of utter loneliness took possession of her; and with it a feeling of it-doesn't-matter, an impatience of misfortune, a certain recklessness of thought that challenged the better instincts of her nature. She was one of those intellectual, impulsive women who need the good influence of a wise, loving mother, the example of a strong, manly, honourable father; or, what is still better, the affectionate guidance of a clever, big-hearted husband. She thought philosophically, and felt like a woman; in mind, she looked upon men as inferior to women. In her heart she loved a man passionately, but

she would have gone on loving him without disclosing her secret, if circumstances had not placed her in a situation in which her heart had got the better of her head. Hers was a nature full of contradictions. It was most admirable when under the influence of her heart; but she was continually agitated with struggles between her strong common sense and her sentiment of affection; between her superstitious idea of duty and her desire to love and be loved; between her pride of birth and her pride of personal power; between her love of pretty dresses and her love of independence; and on this morning, worn with the most agitating incident of her life, angry with herself, disappointed at waking up and finding Oliver North gone, after her startling display of humility; irritated at old Nannie Dawson's familiarity; and increasingly conscious of her father's in

debtedness to Lord Ellerbie, she was stricken with a sense of bewilderment that bordered on despair.

"I will go and see Mary Kirk," she said, by-and-by.

When she expressed that intention to her father, Mr. Hardwick promptly agreed with her wish, making a mental determination that, while she was in the neighbourhood of Brackenbury Towers, he would call upon her with Lord Ellerbie, and make her pay a visit to that historic place.

In the meantime, Mr. Septimus Dobbs, reclining upon his leather chair in his private office, in the midst of his papers and parchments, like a spider in the middle of his web, waiting for victims, decided, like the human spider he was, that he must spin a connecting link between Chesterfield and London. His plans had extend