COULSON KERNAHAN A Dead Man's Diary Coulson Kernahan, born at Ilfracombe, England, Aug. 1, 1858, is a son of Dr. James Kernahan, M.A. He has contributed largely to periodicals, and has written in many veins, alternating serious and religious works with sensational novels, and literary criticism with humour and sport. It is by his imaginative booklets--now collected in one volume under the title of "Visions"--that he is best known. These booklets have circulated literally "by the million," and have been translated into no fewer than sixteen languages, including Chinese. "A Dead Man's Diary" appeared anonymously in 1890, and attracted unusual attention, the authorship being attributed, among others, to Harold Frederic and Robert Buchanan. Since then "A Dead Man's Diary"--of which Mr. J.M. Barrie, in reviewing it, said, "The vigour of the book is great, and the author has such a gift of intensity that upon many readers it will have mesmeric effect"--has gone through innumerable editions, in England and in America. I.--The Ghost of the Past

Some years ago I became so seriously ill that I was pronounced dying, and, finally, dead. Dead to all intents and purposes I remained for two days, when, to the astonishment of the physicians, I exhibited symptoms of returning vitality, and in a week was convalescent.

Of the moments preceding my passing I recollect only that there came over me a strange and sudden sense of loss, as though some life-element had gone out from me. Of pain there was none, nor any mental anxiety.

I recollect only an ethereal lightness of limb, and a sense of soul-emancipation and peace, a sense of soul-emancipation such as one might feel were he to awaken on a sunny summer morning to find that sorrow and sin were gone from the world for ever, a peace ample and restful as the hallowed hush and awe of twilight, without the twilight's tender pain.

Then I seemed to be sinking slowly and steadily through still depths of sun-steeped, light-filled waters that sang in my ears with a sound like a sweet, sad sobbing and soaring of music, and through which there swam up to me, in watered vistas of light, scenes of sunny seas and shining shores where smiling isles stretched league beyond league afar.

And so life ebbed away, until there came a time when the outward and deathward-setting tide seemed to reach its climax, and when I felt myself swept shoreward and lifeward again on the inward-setting tide of that larger life into which I had died.

My next recollection is that the events of my past life were rising before me. The hands on the dial of time went back a score of years, and I was a young man of twenty-one, living in chambers off Holborn. One evening there burst over London a fearful thunderstorm, and hearing a knock at my door, I opened it, to find a beautiful girl named Dorothy, the daughter of the housekeeper, standing there. Terrified by the lightning, and finding herself alone, she begged to be allowed to remain until her mother's return.

The words had scarcely passed her lips before there came another blinding flash of lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a terrific crash of thunder. With a cry of passion and fear, she flung her arms around me, and the next moment I found myself pressing her to my heart and telling her, amid a score of burning kisses, that I loved her.

Almost immediately afterwards, we heard the opening of doors, which indicated her mother's home-coming; but, before leaving, Dorothy told me that the room immediately above mine was her own. Of the hell-born thought which rose in my mind as I listened she, I am sure, had no suspicion. Need I tell the remainder of my story? I think not.

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You may wonder, perhaps, why I recall circumstances that happened so many years ago. You would cease to wonder had you seen the ghost of the past rise up to call upon God and His Christ for judgment upon the betrayer. For this was my first glimpse of hell; this was my day of judgment. The recording angel of my awakened conscience showed me my sin, and the ruin my sin had wrought, as God sees, and I realised that--But no! I am sick, I am fainting! I cannot--I cannot write more.

II.--The Secret of Man's Destiny

"When anyone dies," I had been told in childhood, "he goes either to heaven or to hell, according to whether he has been a good or bad man," and I recollect being not a little troubled as to what became of the people whose virtues were about equally matched with their vices. When I opened my eyes in that ante-chamber of the spirit-world into which I have had admittance I discovered that heaven and hell as separate places have no existence, for the good, the bad, and the indifferent exist together exactly as they exist here. I do not say that there will be no day of harvesting in which the tares shall finally be separated from the wheat. On that point, as on many others, I am ignorant. Men and women whom I know on earth speak of the dead--"the changed"--as being perfected in knowledge and as having solved for ever "the great secret." That is not my experience.

So far from "the great secret," the secret of man's destiny and God's Being, becoming known at death, the facts as I found them are that these remain almost as great a mystery after death as before.

Even in hell (I use the word as indicating mental or physical suffering--in my case, the former--not with any local significance) there are moments when the anguish-stricken spirit is mercifully allowed a temporary reprieve. Such a moment occurred after the first awful paroxysm of self-loathing and torture which I experienced when my past life was made known to me in its true colours, and it was in this saner and comparatively painless interval that I met one whom I had known on earth as a woman of the purest life and character. Being still under the impression that I was in hell in the sense in which I had been accustomed to think of that place, I started back upon seeing her, and cried out in astonishment, "You here! You! And in Hades!"

"Where else should I be except where Arthur is?" she answered quietly, and I then remembered a worthless brother of that name to whom she was passionately attached. "Even Dives in the parable," she went on, "was unable to forget the five brethren he had left behind him, and cried out amid the flames, asking that Lazarus be sent to warn them, lest they, too, came to that place of torment. Is it likely, then, that any wife, mother, or sister, worthy the name, would be content to remain idle in heaven, knowing that a loved one was in hell and in agony? We are told that after His death Christ preached to the spirits in prison, and I believe that He came here to hell in search of the so-called lost."

"Tell me," I said, "you who are in heaven, if you are perfectly happy."

"You are not altogether wrong in calling this heaven," she replied, "although it is little more than the antechamber between earth and heaven. It is my heaven at present, but it will not be my heaven always, any more than it will be always your hell, and although it is heaven, it is not the heaven. When I was on earth, I longed for heaven, not that I might be delivered from sorrow, but from sinfulness; and I think I may say that I am as happy here as my failures will let me be."

"Your failures!" I exclaimed. "I thought we had done with failures."

"You remember the text in the Koran," she said. "'Paradise is under the shadow of swords.' Here, as on earth, there is no progress without effort, and here, too, there are difficulties to be overcome. Yet even on earth there was one element in the strife which lent dignity even to our failures. Sin and shame are, after all, only human; the effort and determination to overcome them are divine. Ceasing to be an angel, Satan became a devil. Man falls, and even in his fall retains something of God."

After a time we fell to talking of the past, and, mentioning the name of the very noblest man I have ever known, a man who made possible the purity of Sir Galahad, made possible the courage of Coeur de Lion--I had almost said made possible the sinfulness of Christ--I inquired whether she had seen him in Paradise.

"As yet," she answered, "I know only one of the many circles into which the spirit-world seems naturally to resolve it. But I suspect that if you and I could see where he is, we should find him infinitely nearer to the Father-heart of the universe than I at least can for countless ages hope to attain!"

"What do you mean by 'circles'?" I said. "Is each human soul on its arrival here assigned a fitting place and level among his or her spiritual fellows?"

"There is some such gathering of like to like as that of which you speak," she answered. "The majority begin in a lower circle, and remain there until they are fitted to move onward to a higher sphere. Others take a place in that higher sphere immediately, and some few are led into the Holy Presence straightway."

And then her voice seemed to sound to me like the voice of one in the far distance; I felt the darkness closing in upon me on every side, and knew that my hour of punishment was again at hand.

III.--Dead Souls

Of all the faces which I saw in hell, there was one which had for me a fascination. It was that of a beautiful woman, queenly of manner, fair of figure as a fullblown lily, and with those dark eyes that seem to shine out from soul-depths, deep as the distant heaven, and yet may mean no more than the shallow facing of quicksilver behind a milliner's mirror.

On earth she had deliberately set herself to win and to break the heart of a trusting lad, and the punishment of her sin was that she should now love him with the same intense but hopeless passion with which he had loved her. "My heart is broken," I heard her sob, "and in hell one cannot die of a broken heart. If I had loved him, and he me, and he had died, I could have borne it, knowing that I should meet him hereafter; but to live loveless through eternity, that is the thought which kills me."

Another sight which I saw was that of a desolate plain, low-lying and unlighted, in the centre of which there roamed one who called out as if in search of a companion, but to whom there came no answer save the echo of his own voice. A more lonely and lifeless spot I have never seen. The silence seemed sometimes to oppress him like a presence, for, with a half-affrighted and despairing cry, he set off at a panic-stricken run, as if seeking to escape this silence by flight; but, notwithstanding his haste, he made no progress, for he was but moving round and round in a circle. Once, when he passed near me, I heard him cry out: "Is there no living soul in all this void and voiceless desert?" And, as he hurried by, I recognised him as a man whom I had often heard say on earth that hell would not be hell to him so long as he and his boon companions were together.

Another whom I saw in Hades I should--save for his pitiable effort to escape observation--have passed unnoticed. His pitfall in life had been love of approbation, which was so strong that he was never happy except in perpetually endeavoring to pass himself off for that which he knew he was not. The only aim of his existence had been to win the approval of others, and, lo! one morning he awoke in Hades to find himself the despised of the despised, and the laughing stock of the very Devil. I saw few more pitiable sights than that of this wretched creature, slinking shamefacedly through hell, and wincing, as from a blow, at the glance of every passer.

During my wanderings I had reason to ask one whom I had known on earth concerning the fate of an old acquaintance of his own.

"I will tell you all I know, of the man about whom you ask," he said, "but first let me explain that my sorest hindrance on earth was unbelief. Once, when I might have believed, I would not, and my punishment is that now, when I would believe, I cannot, but am for ever torn by hideous apprehension and doubt. Moreover, there are many things which, clear and plain as they may be to the faithful of heart and to the believing, are to my doubting eyes wrapt around in mystery. Into these mysteries it has been ordained as part of my punishment that I shall ever desire to look, and of all these mysteries there is none which fills me with such horror and dread as the mystery of the dead who die."

"Of the dead who die!" I said. "What do you mean by those strange words? Surely all who die are dead."

"They are my words," he cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh. "The words I use to myself when I think of the mystery which they strove so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all their cunning I have discovered. When first I came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven, the faces of most of the dead whom I had known on earth, but some faces there were--the man of whom you ask was one--which I missed, and from that time to this I have never seen. 'Where, then, are they?' I asked myself, 'since neither earth, hell, nor heaven knows them more? Has God some fearful fate in store for sinners, which may one day fall upon me as it has already fallen upon them?' And so I set myself to discover what had become of these missing faces, and you shall hear the result.

"When you and I were children, we were taught that every human being is born with an immortal soul. But they did not tell us that just as neglected diseases can kill the body, so unchecked sin can kill the soul. But it is so, and that is what I meant when I said that he of whom you asked was 'of the dead who die.'

"You shake your head, and mutter that I am mad. Well, perhaps I am mad--mad with the horror of my unbelief; but why should it not be as I say? When God made man He made a creature to whom it was given to choose for himself between good and evil. But God knew that some of those He had thus made would deliberately choose evil, that some few would indeed sin away all trace of their Divine origin. God did not will it so, for He made us men, not machines, and the evil we do is of our own choosing; but God fore-knew it, and, foreknowing that, God owed it to Himself not to call into being a creature the result of whose creation would be that creature's eternal misery. Hence it was that He decreed that those for whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their deaths like the brutes. Our life is from God, and may not God take His own again? And could anything better happen to many people whom you and I have known on earth than that they should be allowed to die out, and the very memory of them to pass away for ever?"

I was convinced that he was mad--mad, as he had himself hinted, with the horror of his unbelief.

"And I am one of them," he exclaimed. "I am of the dead who die! I have bartered away life, faith, and happiness for Dead Sea fruit; I, who once was young, and not altogether as I now am, a soulless creature of clay! For I can remember the time when flowers, pictures, beautiful faces, and music set stirring emotions within me, in which it seemed that I saw hidden away in the depths of my own heart the shining form of a white-robed soul-maiden, who cried out to me: 'Ah, cannot you make your life as pure and beautiful as the flowers and the music, that so you may set me free?'

"But I chose the ignoble part, and gave myself up, body and soul, to evil and unbelief. And often in the hour when I was tempted to some shameful action I seemed to see the white arms of the soul-maiden uplifted in piteous entreaty to heaven, but at last the time came when her voice was silent, and when I knew that I had thrust her down into a darkness whence she would never again come forth!

"And now the very soul of me is dead, and I know not but that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as one of the dead who die!"

IV.--On the Brink of the Pit

At last there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay so heavily upon me that I felt, if succour there was none, the very soul of me must die.

Of myself, save for the continual crying out of my soul after its lost purity, I scarcely cared to think. It was for Dorothy that I never ceased to sorrow, and--sinner though I was--to pray. I saw then, pictured forth in all their horror, the inevitable consequences of the wrong I had done her. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but fresh upon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read the knowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her not knowing where to turn for refuge from swiftly advancing shame and understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall.

And then--driven out from their midst by the very Christian women who should have been the first to have held out a hand to save--I saw her turn away with a heart hardened into indifference, and plunge headlong into a bottomless gulf of ignominy and sin. Nor did the vision pass until, out of that seething vortex of lust and infamy, I saw arise the black phantom of a lost soul crying out unto God and His Christ for judgment upon the betrayer.

As these hideous spectres of the past came before me, I fell to the ground, borne down by a burden of agony greater even than the very damned in hell can bear. But even as I fell, that burden was lifted and borne away from me, and then I saw, as in a vision, One kneeling in prayer. And I, who had cried out that I could bear the burden of my sin no longer, saw that upon Him was laid, not only my sin, but the sins of the whole world, and that He stooped of His own accord to receive them. And as I looked upon the Divine dignity of that agonised form--forsaken of His Father that we might never be forsaken--I saw great beads of blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung from Him a cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from human lips. And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find myself in hell once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of the wings of hope--the hope which I had deemed dead for ever.

Could it be--O God of mercy! was it possible that even now it might not be too late?--that there was indeed One Who could make my sin as though it had never been?

But to this hope there succeeded a moment when the agonised thought, "How if there be no Christ?" leapt out at me, like the darkness which looms but the blacker for the lightning-flash; a moment when hell got hold of me again, and a thousand gibbering devils arose to shriek in my ear: "And though there be a Christ, is it not now too late?"

I reeled at that cry, and the darkness once more closed in around. A horde of hideous thoughts, the very spawn of hell, swarmed like vermin in my mind; there was the breath as of a host of contending fiends upon my face; a hundred hungry hands seemed to lay hold on me, and to strive to drag me down and down to a bottomless pit that opened at my very feet, and into which I felt myself slipping. With a great cry to God I strove to rise, but my strength failed me, and I had fallen back into the abyss had not one, white-robed as the morning, come suddenly to succour me by stretching forth a hand of aid; and so--beating and battling like a drowning man for breath--I fought my way out, and fell sobbing and faint upon the pit's brink. And with a great cry of anguish I prayed aloud, "Lord Christ! I am foul and sinful! I do not know that I love Thee! I do not even know that I have repented of my sins! I only know that I cannot do the things I would do, and that I can never undo the evil I have done. But I come to Thee, Lord Jesus, I come to Thee as Thou biddest me. Send me not away, O Saviour of sinners."

As I made an end of praying, I looked up and saw standing beside me One, thorn-crowned and with wounded side, Whose features were the features of a man, but Whose face was the face of God.

And as I looked upon that face I shrank back dazed, and breathless, and blinded--shrank back with a cry like the cry of one smitten of the lightning; for beneath the wide white brows there shone out eyes, before the awful purity of which my sin-stained soul seemed to scorch and to shrivel like a scroll in a furnace. But as I lay, lo! there came a tender touch upon my head, and a voice in my ear that whispered, "Son."

And as the word died away into a silence like the hallowed hush of listening angels, and I stretched forth my arms with a cry of unutterable longing and love, I say that He held one by the hand--even the one who had plucked me out of the abyss into which I had fallen--and I saw that it was Dorothy--Dorothy whom He had sought out and saved from the shame to which my sin had driven her, and whom He had sent to succour me, that so He might set upon my soul the seal of His pardon and of His peace.

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h the upper rock walls into the presence of the broad snow-line that rolled above his head in endless lofty tiers, and made for the broader valley which stretched beyond.

There was no pursuit, he thought. How could there be? Who knew of this route but he and his mates? No creature was stirring, but he must onwards--onwards, across the snow. Twilight, and then night, and still the snow but half passed. Strange ghosts and fancies crowd in upon him thick and fast.

Morning, and the pale ghosts have departed. He reached the gully where his refuge lay, utterly dispirited, just as the sun was setting. He turned a sharp angle round an abrupt cliff. He saw a horseman within ten yards of him--Captain Desborough, holding a pistol to his head! Hungry, cold, desperate, unarmed--his pistols had gone with his horse over a precipice--he threw up his arms, and was instantly chained fast to Desborough's saddle, only to be loosed, he knew, by the gallows.

Without a word on either side they began their terrible journey. They had gone two or three miles before Hawker said: "That young fellow I shot when you were after me, is he dead?"

"By this time," said Desborough. "He was dying as I came away."

"Would you mind stopping for a moment, captain? Now tell me who was he?"

"Mr. Charles Hawker, son of Mrs. Hawker, of Toonarbin."

Desborough told me his wild, despairing cry rang in his ears for years afterwards.

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One wild, dreary day in spring, Major Buckley and I were admitted to the condemned cell in the gaol in Sydney. Before us was a kind of bed place. On it lay a man with his face buried in the pillow. I advanced towards him, but the governor held me back.

"My God, sir," he said, "take care! Don't, as you value your life, go within length of his chain."

The handsome head was raised, and my eyes met George Hawker's. I could not see the fierce, desperate villain who had kept our country-side in terror so long; I could only see the handsome, curly-headed boy who used to play with James Stockbridge and myself in Drumston churchyard! And, seeing him, and him only, I sat down beside him, and put my arm round his neck.

I don't want to be instructed in my duty. My duty as a magistrate was to stand at the farther end of the cell, and give this hardened criminal a moral lecture. But I only hung there, with my arm round his neck, and said, "Oh, George, George!" like a fool.

He put his hands on my shoulders, and looked me in the face, and said, after a time, "What! Hamlyn? Old Jeff Hamlyn! Jeff, old boy, I'm to be hung to-morrow."

"I know it," I said. "And I came to ask if I could do anything for you."

"Anything you like, old Jeff," he said, with a laugh, "so long as you don't get me reprieved. I've murdered my own son, Jeff. Do you know that?"

I answered, "Yes, I know that, George; but you did not know who he was."

"He came at me to take my life," said Hawker. "And I tell you, if I had guessed who he was, I'd have blown my brains out to save him from the crime of killing me."

The major came forward, and held out his hand to George Hawker, and asked him to forgive him; he had been his enemy since they first met.

"Let me tell you, major, I feel more kind and hearty towards you and Hamlyn for coming to me like this than I've felt towards any man this twenty years. Time's up, I see. I ain't so much of a coward, am I, Jeff? Good-bye, old lad, good-bye!"

That was the last we saw of him; the next morning he was executed with four of his comrades.

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After all this, we old folks taking up our residence at Baroona had agreed to make common house of it. We were very dull at first, but I remember many pleasant evenings, when we played whist; and Mary Hawker, in her widow's weeds, sat sewing by the fireside contentedly enough.

But one evening next spring in stalked Tom Troubridge; and, in short, he took her off with him, and they were married. And I think I never saw a couple more sincerely attached than she and her husband.

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Ravenshoe

"Ravenshoe" was Henry Kingsley's second novel, and it was published in 1862, when its author was thirty-two years old. It will always rank with "Geoffry Hamlyn" as Henry Kingsley's best work. These two books were their author's favourites among his own novels, and Charles Ravenshoe was one of his two favourite characters. It has been said that "Ravenshoe" is "alive--the expression of a man who worked both with heart and brain," and few would care to dispute that opinion. For study of character, wide charity of outlook, brilliant descriptive writing--as, for instance, in the charge at Balaclava, and real, not mawkish, pathos--as in the hopeless misery of Charles, invalided, with only eighteen shillings, out of the army--"Ravenshoe" will always deserve to be read. It is the work of a writer who was not ashamed to avow himself an "optimist."

I.--Charles Loses His Brother and His Home

In 1820 Densil lost both his father and mother, and found himself, at the age of thirty-seven, master of Ravenshoe--an estate worth £10,000 a year--and master of himself.

Densil was an only son. His father, Peter Ravenshoe, had married Alicia, daughter of Charles, Earl of Ascot.

The Ravenshoes, an old West of England family, were Catholics; but Densil's second wife (his first wife died childless in 1816) was a Protestant, and made her husband promise that all her children, after her first born, should be brought up Protestant.

Mrs. Ravenshoe bore Densil two sons: Cuthbert, born 1826; Charles, born 1831.

On the night Charles was born his mother lay dying, and Densil swore to her he would keep the promise he had made. And to this vow he was faithful, in spite of the indignation of Father Mackworth, the resident Catholic priest at Ravenshoe.

The doctor insisted that a nurse was an immediate necessity, and James Horton, Densil's devoted servant and head keeper, suggested his wife, Norah; a proposal that had the doctor's immediate approval.

In due time Charles went to Eton and to Oxford, where he was rusticated for a term with his friend Lord Welter, Lord Ascot's eldest son, and fell in love with Adelaide, a penniless young lady, who acted as companion to old Lady Ascot.

At Ravenshoe, Charles and Mackworth seldom met without a "sparring match," for to the priest it was intolerable that this house should, in the event of Cuthbert dying childless, pass into Protestant hands.

On the other hand, it was natural that a considerable amount of familiarity, and a most sincere and hearty affection, should exist between Charles and his servant and foster-brother, William Horton. Till Charles went to Shrewsbury he had never had another playfellow, for his brother Cuthbert was reserved and bookish; and the friendship between the two had grown with age.

One other inmate of Ravenshoe must be mentioned--this was little Mary Corby, who was saved miraculously from the wreck of the Warren Hastings when Charles was about ten. She was the daughter of Captain Corby, and when the ship went down in fifteen fathoms of water, the mate, assisted by fishermen, and encouraged by Densil, managed to get the little girl to shore, and to Ravenshoe--for the house was not far from the cliffs.

In spite of Densil's letters and inquiries, no friends came forward to claim little Mary, then a child of nine, and in three months she was considered as a permanent member of the household. And the night before Charles went to school he told her of his grand passion for Adelaide.

On the day of the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, when Charles rowed three in the winning boat, Densil Ravenshoe died, after two days' illness. Old James Horton's death occurred at the same time. Charles hurried home in time for the funeral, and when all was over a servant came up to him, and asked him would he see Mr. Ravenshoe in the library? Charles entered the library with William, who had also been sent for.

Charles went up silently and kissed his brother on the forehead. For a few minutes Cuthbert neither moved nor spoke, while Charles greeted Mackworth civilly. William stood at a little distance, looking uneasily from one to another.

Cuthbert broke the silence, and as he spoke Charles, by some instinct, laid his hand on William's shoulder.

"I sent for you," he said, "on business which must be gone through with, though I expect it will kill me. I should like to prepare you for what is to come, but the blow would be equally severe whether you expect it or not. You two who stand there were nursed at the same breast. That groom on whose shoulder you have your hand now is my real brother; you are no relation to me--you are the son of the faithful old servant whom we buried to-day with my father!"

Charles at once asked for proofs and witnesses, and Mackworth took up the tale.

"Your mother was Norah, James Horton's wife. James Horton was Densil Ravenshoe's half-brother, and the illegitimate son of Peter. She confessed to me the wicked fraud she practised, and has committed that confession to paper. I hold it. You have not a point of ground to stand on. You have been living in luxury and receiving an expensive education when you should have been cleaning out the stable."

Charles's heart died away within him.

"Cuthbert," he said, "you are a gentleman. Is this true?"

"God knows how terribly true it is!" said Cuthbert quietly.

Father Mackworth handed the paper, signed by his mother, to him, and Charles read it. It was completely conclusive. William also read it, and turned pale.

Cuthbert spoke again in his quiet, passionless voice.

"My intention," he said, "is to make a provision of £300 a year for this gentleman, whom till the last few days I believed to be my brother. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Charles, I offered Father Mackworth £10,000 for this paper, with a view to destroying it. You see what a poor weak rogue I am, and what a criminal I might become with a little temptation. Father Mackworth did his duty and refused me!"

"You acted like yourself, Cuthbert. Like one who would risk body and soul for one you loved. But it is time that this scene should end. I utterly refuse the assistance so nobly offered. I go forth alone into the world to make my own way, or to be forgotten. It only remains to say good-bye. I leave this house without a hard thought towards any one in it. I am at peace with all the world. Father Mackworth, I beg your forgiveness. I have often been rude and brutal to you. Good-bye!"

He shook hands with Mackworth, then with William, and lastly he went up to Cuthbert and kissed him on the cheek; and then walked out of the door into the hall.

"I am going to follow him, wherever he goes," said William. "If he goes to the world's end, I will be with him!"

II.--Charles Loses Himself

Charles fled from Ravenshoe for London in the middle of the night, determined that William should not follow him. But he could not bear to go out and seek fortune without seeing Adelaide. So he called at Ranford, Lord Ascot's seat, only to learn that Adelaide had eloped with Lord Welter. The two were married when he afterwards saw them in London.

Charles had to tell his story to old Lady Ascot, and when he had gone she said to herself, "I will never keep another secret after this. It was for Alicia's sake and for Peter's that I did it, and now see what has become of me!"

In London, Charles Ravenshoe committed suicide deliberately. He did not hang himself or drown himself; he hired himself out as groom--being perfectly accomplished in everything relating to horses--to Lieutenant Hornby, of the 140th Hussars; and when the Crimean War broke out, enlisted, under the name of Simpson, as a trooper in Hornby's regiment.

On October 25 Charles was at Balaclava. They went down hill, straight towards the guns, and almost at once the shot from them began to tell. Charles was in the second line, and the men in the front line began to fall terribly fast as they rode into the narrowing valley. It was impossible to keep line. Presently the batteries right and left opened on them, and those who were there engaged can give us very little idea of what followed in the next quarter of an hour. They were soon among the guns--the very guns that had annoyed them from the first--and Charles, and two or three others known to him, were hunting some Russian artillerymen round these guns for a minute or so.

He saw also at this time a friend of his--a cornet--on foot, and rode to his assistance. He caught a riderless horse, and the cornet mounted. Then the word was given to get back again, and as they turned their faces to get out of this terrible hell, poor Charles gave a short, sharp scream, and bent down in his saddle over his horse's neck.

It was nothing. It was only as if one were to have twenty teeth pulled out at once. The pain was over in an instant. His left arm seemed nearly dead, but he could hold his reins in a way. He saw Hornby before him, and his own friends were beside him again, and there was a rally and a charge. At guns? No. At men this time--Russian hussars--right valiant fellows, too. He could do but little himself. He rode at a Russian, and unhorsed him; he remembers seeing the man go down. They beat them back, and then turned and rode--for it was time.

As the noise of the battle grew fainter behind them, he looked around to see who was riding beside him and holding him by the right arm. It was the little cornet. Charles wondered why he did so.

"You're hard hit, Simpson," said the cornet. "Never mind. Keep your saddle a little longer. We shall be all right directly."

Charles looked down, and noticed that his left arm was hanging numbed by his side, and that a trooper was guiding his horse.

Soon they were among English faces, and English cheers rang out in welcome to their return, but it was nothing to him; he kept his eye, which was growing dim, on Hornby, and when he saw him fall off his saddle into the arms of a trooper, he dismounted, too, and staggered towards him.

The world seemed to go round and round, and he felt about him like a blind man. But he found Hornby somehow. Presently a doctor was bending over him.

Later, they found Hornby dead and cold, with his head on Charles's lap. Charles had been struck by a ball in the bone of his arm, and the splinters were driven into the flesh, though the arm was not broken. It was a nasty business, said the doctors. All sorts of things might happen to him. Only one thing was certain, and that was that Charles Ravenshoe's career in the army was over for ever.

At home they all believed him dead, for William had traced him to Varna, and there had been informed that his foster-brother had died of cholera. The change of name was partly responsible for this, for among the dead or living there was no signs of Charles Ravenshoe.

But he recovered, after a long spell in the hospital at Scutari, and after a time was sent home to Fort Pitt. But that mighty left arm, which had done such noble work when it belonged to No. 3 in the Oxford University Eight, was useless; and Charles Simpson, trooper of the 140th, was discharged from the army, and found himself on Christmas Eve in the street with eighteen shillings and ninepence in his pocket, wondering blindly what the end would be, but no more dreaming of begging from those who had known him formerly than of leaping off Waterloo Bridge.

III.--The Last Eighteen Shillings

Charles's luck seemed certainly to have deserted him at last. He had got to spend his Christmas with eighteen shillings and a crippled left arm, and had nothing left to trust to but his little friend, the cornet, who had come home invalided, and was living with his mother in Hyde Park Gardens.

The cornet welcomed him with both hands, and, hearing from Charles of his plight, said, "Now, I know you are a gentleman, and I may offend you, but, if you are utterly hard up, take service with me. There!"

"I will do so with the deepest gratitude," said Charles. "But I cannot ride, I fear. My left arm is gone."

"Pish! Ride with your right. It's a bargain."

Then Charles went upstairs, and was introduced to the cornet's mother.

He accepted his new position with dull carelessness. Life was getting very worthless. And all this time, had he but known it, money and a home, and sweet little Mary Corby, who had loved him ever since he was a boy, were waiting for him.

There was also a remarkable advertisement which appeared in the "Times" for a considerable period, and was never seen by Charles. The advertisement was inserted by old Lady Ascot, and offered one hundred guineas to any person who could discover the register of marriage between Peter Ravenshoe, Esq., of Ravenshoe, in the county of Devon, and Maria Dawson, supposed to have been solemnised about 1778.

How was Charles to know that Cuthbert Ravenshoe was dead; that William, now master of Ravenshoe, still hoped for his foster-brother's life, and that old Lady Ascot was doing all she could to atone for a mistake? Charles, in fact, was still very weak and ill, and served his friend the cornet in a poor way. He had not recovered the shock of his fever and delirium in the Crimea, and both nerve and health were gone.

Nobody could be more kind and affectionate than the cornet and his deaf mother. They guessed that he was "somebody," and that things were wrong with him; and the cornet once or twice invited his confidence; but he was too young, and Charles had not the energy to tell him anything.

And life was getting very, very weary business for Charles. By day, riding had become a terror, and at night he got no rest. And his mind began to dwell too much on the bridges over the Thames, and on the water lapping and swirling about the piers.

Then, as it happened, a little shoeblack with whom Charles had struck up a friendship, falling sick in a foul court in South London, Charles must needs go and sit with him. The child died in his arms, and a dull terror came on Charles when he thought of his homeward journey. A scripture reader who had been in the room came towards him and laid his hand upon his shoulder. Charles turned from the dead child, and looked up into the face of John Marston, the best of his old Oxford friends.

They passed out of the house together, Charles clinging tight to John Marston's arms. When they got to Marston's lodgings, Charles sat down by the fire, and said quietly, "John, you have saved me! I should never have got home this night."

But John Marston, by finding Charles, had dashed his dearest hopes to the ground. He had always loved Mary Corby from his first visit to Ravenshoe, and Mary loved Charles, who had loved Adelaide, who had married Lord Welter. Marston thought there was just a chance for him, and now that chance was gone. How did he behave, knowing that?

He put his hand on Charles's shoulder and said, "Charles--Charles, my dear old boy, look up! Think of Mary. She has been wooed by more than one, but I think her heart is yours yet."

"John," said Charles, "that is what has made me hide from you all like this. I know that she loved me above all men; and partly that she should forget a penniless and disgraced man like myself, and partly from a silly pride, I have spent all my cunning on losing myself, hoping that you would believe me dead."

"We have hunted you hard, Charles. You do not know, I suppose, that you are a rich man, and undoubtedly heir of Ravenshoe, though one link is still wanting."

"What do you mean?"

"There is no reasonable doubt, although we cannot prove it, that your grandfather Peter was married previously to his marriage with Lady Alicia Staunton, that your father James was the real Ravenshoe, while poor Cuthbert and William--"

"Cuthbert! I will hide again. I will never displace Cuthbert, mind you."

"Cuthbert is dead. He was drowned bathing last August."

Charles broke down, and cried like a child. When he was quiet, he asked after William.

"He is very well, as he deserves to be. He gave up everything to hunt you through the world and bring you back. Now, my dear old boy, do satisfy my curiosity. What regiment did you enlist in?"

"In the 140th."

He paused, hid his face in his hands, and then his speech became rapid and incoherent.

"At Devna we got wood-pigeons, and I rode the Roucan-nosed bay, and he carried me through it capitally. I ask your pardon, sir, but I am only a poor discharged trooper. I would not beg, sir, if I could help it, but pain and hunger are hard things to bear, sir!"

"Charles--Charles! Don't you know me?"

"That is my name, sir. That is what they used to call me. I am no common beggar, sir. I was a gentleman once, sir, and rode a-horseback. I was in the light cavalry charge at Balaclava. An angry business. They shouldn't get good fellows to fight together like that--"

The next morning, old Lady Ascot, William, Mary, and John Marston were round his bed listening to his half-uttered, delirious babble. The anxious question was put to the greatest of the doctors present. "My dear Dr. B----, will he die?"

"Well, yes," said the doctor. "I would sooner say 'Yes' than 'No'--the chances are so heavy against him. You must really prepare for the worst."

IV.--A Life-Long Shadow

Of course, he did not die--I need not tell you that. The doctors pulled him through. And when he was better the doctors removed the splinters of bone from his arm. He did not talk much in this happy quiet time. William and Lady Ascot were with him all day. William, dear fellow, used to sit on a footstool and read the "Times" to him.

Lord Welter (now Lord Ascot, on the death of his father) came to see Charles one day, and something he said made Charles ask if Adelaide was dead.

"Tell me something," said Lord Ascot. "Have you any love left for her yet?"

"Not one spark," said Charles. "If I ever am a man again, I shall ask Mary Corby to marry me. I ought to have done so sooner, perhaps. But I love your wife, Welter, in a way; and I should grieve at her death, for I loved her once."

"The truth is very horrible. We went out hunting together, and I was getting the gate open for her, when her devil of a horse rushed it, and down they came on it together. And she broke her back, and the doctor says she may live till seventy, but that she will never move from where she lies--and just as I was getting to love her so dearly--"

That same afternoon Charles asked William to get Mary to come and see him, and William straightway departed, and found Mary. And later in the day Miss Mary Corby announced that she and Charles were engaged to be married.

William was still master of Ravenshoe, but he was convinced that the first marriage of his grandfather would be proved, and Charles reinstated.

"Remember, Charles, I am not spending the revenues of Ravenshoe," he said. "They are yours. I know it. I am spending about £400 a year. When our grandfather's marriage is proved, you will provide for me and my wife, I know that. Be quiet."

William had long been engaged, from the time he had been Charles's servant, to a fisherman's daughter, Jane Evans, and the change in his fortunes made no difference in the matter. She was only a fisherman's daughter, but she was wonderfully beautiful, and gentle, and good.

The weddings took place at St. Peter's, Eaton Square. Mary and Charles were not a handsome couple. The enthusiasm of the population was reserved for William and Jane Evans, who certainly were.

Father Mackworth, dying after a stroke of paralysis, told us the date and place of Peter Ravenshoe's first marriage--Finchampstead, Berks, 1778. He had known the truth, but had been anxious to keep Ravenshoe in Catholic hands.

"You used to irritate and insult me, sir," he said, turning to Charles, "and I was not so near death then as now. If you can forgive me, in God's name, say so!"

Charles went over to him, and put his arm round him.

"Forgive you!" he said. "Dear Mackworth, can you forgive me?"

The register was found, and the lawyers were soon busy. One document may be noted, a rent charge on Ravenshoe of two thousand a year in favour of William Ravenshoe.

---

Well, Charles and William are both happily married now, and I saw Charles last summer playing with his eldest boy. But there was a cloud on his face, for the memory of those few terrible months has cast its shadow upon him, and the shadow will lie, I fancy, upon that forehead until the forehead is smoothed in the sleep of death.