I’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak.

I’ll have my bond; and therefore speak no more;

I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool,

To shake the head, relent, and sigh and yield.

—Shakspere.

Nathan Gomer reached the door of the chamber of Flora Wilton, and paused.

He looked about him, up the corridor and down the corridor, and then, stooping down, he peeped through the keyhole.

He uttered an exclamation—not of joy.

He pressed the palms of his hands together and looked once more up and down the corridor, and then, gently opening Flora’s chamber door, he glided within, closed it after him, and stood for a moment and gazed upon the prostrate girl.

A tear twinkled in both eyes.

He brushed them sharply away.

“Flora—Flora, my child,” he whispered, yet loud enough for her to hear; though his step had been noiseless and her grief was still in its intensity.

He bent over her, and raised her up, with eyes red and swimming in tears; she turned her feeble gaze upon him, and could not in spite of her anguish, repress an exclamation of surprise at seeing the strange looking benefactor of her father before her.

She attempted to efface the traces of her tears, and to speak, but the task was not so easily to be accomplished.

Nathan perceived her intention, and its result, and in a voice agitated and slightly husky, he said to her—“Don’t mind me, pretty one. Don’t mind me—I know all. Make no struggle with your grief on my account—I say don’t make it for me; and when you have exhausted yourself, and feel very ill, as you will if you go on in this fashion—I think I may say that you will—then take for comfort—you can now, if you like—my assurance that you may rely on me as a friend, and all shall yet go well. I say I think you may rely on me. I know whither your heart has travelled and where it resteth; I have vowed to secure your happiness, Flora—I say, your happiness—and it is not wealth that gives happiness. I think—I know that—I believe—I may say I do know that. You shall be happy yet, pretty one, if you will be so.”

Flora turned gratefully towards him. She knew that he possessed inexplicable power, and seemed to be able to produce results according to his pleasure, and she felt that for him to say that in this affair of the heart he would stand her friend, was almost tantamount—considering the extraordinary influence he possessed over her father—to placing her hand in Hal’s before the altar. .

She bent her sweet eyes upon him gratefully.

“How can I thank you?” she said, in a low tone.

“Thank me!” he cried, with a grin, “you must wait before you do that. I say, you should never be premature with thanks; you should always wait until the promise is redeemed, and you are benefited to your wish, then thank. Promises are slippery things—I say promises sometimes are not fulfilled: thank me, my dear child, when you feel supremely happy through my instrumentality.”

He turned his back to her, pressed his two hands together beneath his chin, and gazed heavenwards.

“You shall be,” he murmured—“by God’s providence, you shall be.”

Flora could not help regarding him with a strange mixture of reverence and dread; reverence, for he had been known only to her as a great benefactor to the family; and with dread because he was so singular in his outward form, and appeared at such remarkable moments, and in so strange a manner. He turned again to her. Apparently he read the expression of her features, for a pleased smile lighted up his gold-hued features, and he tapped her gently and pleasantly on the shoulder.

“Come, come,” he said, “dry up those tears and look cheerful; I have said all shall go as you wish it; it shall. I have now an agreeable surprise for you; so you pop on your bonnet and make your way into the garden, and pace by the side of the fountain until my surprise comes and startles you.”

“I pray you to excuse me, sir,” said Flora, faltering, “indeed I have no strength to leave this chamber just now.”

“Nor spirit either, I fancy,” he observed, with his peculiar grin.

She did not reply, and he went on—

“Well, you must have your surprise here, then, I suppose. It wears a hat, a coat, and trousers; it is bronzed with the sun in the face; it went away in years gone by without a word to family or friends, roamed over seas and strange lands”——

“Mark?” almost screamed Flora.

“Come home,” laconically replied Nathan.

Flora staggered to a seat, and looked as if she would faint; her nostrils were inflated, and she breathed short and quick.

“Nonsense!” cried Nathan, growing frightened at her aspect. “Keep up your courage; he is well, hearty, happy, longing to see you. Shall I send him to you?”

“This moment,” gasped Flora. “Oh, my heart aches, and I feel sick and faint, until he again folds his loving arms about me!”

Nathan blew his nose and coughed.

“He shall be here in a—in five minutes,” he said, after two or three efforts to clear his throat. “I’ll send him, never fear—I think I said five minutes—that will give you time to prepare yourself. Remember, no more tears. All will yet go well. I have said it.”

He hurried from the room as he spoke, and though he knew that Mark and Hal were together, he contrived to keep his word. And it was so far well that he did, inasmuch that Mark, after a somewhat lengthened interview with his sister, immediately sought out Hal in the village to which he had retired, and remained with him until he took the train for London, and then he parted with him on the most friendly terms.

During Mark’s absence, Nathan Gomer presented himself before old Wilton, who received him with the same eagerness and respect he had always previously displayed. Colonel Mires, who was having a tete-a-tete with his host, took the opportunity which the coming of Nathan Gomer afforded him to retire, to brood over dark projects for the future.

Nathan looked after him.

“Don’t like him,” he muttered; “mischief in him. He’s got some cut-throat purpose haunting him, and he will try to execute it, too. I say, he will make the attempt. Must look after him.”

“What do you say?” asked Wilton, trying to catch his words.

“Nothing for your ear,” replied Nathan, a little tartly. “I have a bad habit of talking while I am thinking—foolish that; I may venture to say that it is a very foolish habit.”

Wilton responded; and then Nathan Gomer, drawing a chair near to him, sat down and at once proceeded to business.

He circumstantially and clearly related all the incidents which had transpired in connection with Josh Maybee, even to the trick which he had himself played Chewkle, and he assured him that the missing documents were all secured and in safe possession. Arrangements also, he informed him, had been completed with Maybee, who had a rightful share in the property. The only thing he waited for, was to know what course was to be pursued with respect to Grahame, who was now entirely in their power.

Wilton’s features assumed a hard, grim expression. His eyeballs contracted into small glittering circles. He fastened them upon the brilliant orbs of Nathan Gomer.

“No mercy,” he growled through his clenched teeth, “he must be crushed.”

“A-hem!” coughed Nathan Gomer; “revengeful, eh, Wilton?”

“Revengeful!” echoed Wilton, with a hiss. “What! do you think I can forget the years of grinding, torturing poverty he has caused me? Do you think I can wipe out, with a wave of the hand, the recollection of the last effort of his accursed cupidity—the act which tore me from my children, and hurried me to the horrors of a debtor’s prison? Nathan! Nathan?” he cried, clutching at his companion’s wrist, and speaking in a low, guttural tone—an evidence of the depth of the emotion under which he laboured—“can I consign his acts to oblivion when I look round these walls—when I pace these chambers—when I wander in the grounds yonder, among the flowers and the trees, and miss her companionship, her gentle presence, who made this abode a Paradise—whose absence shrouds it in intense gloom?”

“No—no—no!” almost groaned Nathan, shrouding his eyes with his hands. “She reigned here a queen of light, of joy; the music of her voice, the magic of her sweet and tender beaming eyes, made Harleydale a heaven. Was she not thrust from hence?—was she not crammed into a den of wretchedness—into a foul, impure atmosphere?—compelled to endure privation, want, rags? By whom?—by whom?—answer me that.”

“Oh! that I had earlier known whither you had transported yourselves when you quitted this!” moaned Nathan, evidently in anguish at the picture Wilton was placing before his eyes.

“Was it not Grahame!” continued Wilton, fiercely; “did he not juggle me out of my signature to bonds that he might utterly destroy me, when he knew that she—a very flower, cultured only in the tenderest carefulness, sheltered from the ruder atmosphere of human society—had been suddenly hurled where the blasts of poverty and degradation were blighting her, making her pine, fade, droop away out of life. She—my soul, my spirit, the immortal part of my being—who, having gone from me, leaves this frame a machine, this world an expanse of murky mist, penetrated with only one gleam, that bright spot in futurity, When, released from this miserable shackle, this valueless body, I shall join her angel spirit! Did he not slay her?—curse him! Did he not destroy her with his damned impenitent obduracy? Does not her spirit shriek for revenge?”

Wilton flung his arms up in the air, and almost screamed these last words.

Nathan Gomer rose up, and, in a tone of solemnity which thrilled through Wilton’s frame, exclaimed—

“No!”

He paused for a moment, convulsed with emotion.

Then he proceeded—

“Her gentle spirit never harboured such a sentiment. She left to God the exaction of atonement. Your wrongs, which made her a sufferer, did not extort from her a single wish for retribution; you know it, Wilton. She felt the loss of the bright clear air, the waving trees, the open hills, the flowery vales, deeply; but it was because you were thrust from them—because those gentle tributes of her love for you were reared in a sickly atmosphere, instead of the healthy, happy home of which they were unjustly deprived. She sorrowed for them; she pined to see your waning health; she faded, drooped, died; for she had not been gifted with the power to drag out existence in such a sphere as that to which you all were doomed. She hoped, she prayed, for the time when she might see all restored to this fair place again; she knew and felt acutely the wrong which kept you from it; but the wickedness of a bad man never drew from her lips a curse, nor raised within her breast a wish or desire for a remorseless revenge. Her spirit was too angelic, too pure, too good! Oh, Wilton! Wilton! her loss is indeed dreadful!” Nathan pressed his hands over his eyes and hurried to the end of the room, followed by the wondering gaze of Wilton, whose intense and bitter rage against Grahame changed into intense astonishment at what had fallen from his companion’s lips.

What knew he of her who had gone from them to the spirit-land? What entitled him thus to describe and enlarge upon her sweet, unavenging nature? When, where, how had he known her?

Having mastered his feelings, Nathan returned to the table, wearing, to Wilton’s surprise, his usual aspect.

Wilton rapidly put the above questions to him. Nathan waved his hand.

“That explanation, Wilton,” he said, coldly, “will keep until a future day. Let us return to the purpose in hand. Grahame is neck and ankles in your power it is for you to determine what shall be done.”

Again the passion for revenge animated the breast of old Wilton.

“He would not have spared me,” he ejaculated, in a guttural tone. “What right has he to expect mercy at my hands, when he would have shown none to me, had his machinations proved successful?”

“That is beside the question, Wilton, It is in your power now to have an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or, in a spirit of grand magnanimity, to return good for evil. Make your election.”

Wilton leaned over the table, and, in the same fiercely vindictive tone, he growled—

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I will exact all I can”

Nathan paced the room with rather long strides, and returning again, sat down.

“Your plan,” he said, laconically.

“The arrangements with Grahame, in respect to the division of the estates, are not complete.”

“They are not.”

“They shall not be. You hold his promissory notes——”

“I O U’s, capable of being demanded at any moment.”

“The sums you have advanced are large?”

“Very large.”

“If you insist on their being paid instanter, what will be the result to him?”

“Utter and irretrievable ruin.”

“Beggary, Nathan, beggary?”

“The most abject beggary, and imprisonment as well, for the property he once owned is so deeply mortgaged, that not a farthing will be available to pay my new claims upon him.”

Wilton compressed his hands together.

“And his family—his proud, haughty family, Nathan, what of them?”

“They must necessarily be thrown on the world, wholly destitute.”

Wilton rubbed his hands with savage pleasure.

“Who are his mortgagees—do you know their names and addresses?” he asked, in a hissing whisper.

“I am the only mortgagee,” responded Nathan almost proudly, and yet coldly.

“You must transfer all the debts and mortgages to me,” cried Wilton, with an exulting laugh. “Then, then I alone, shall hold complete power over him. Then he shall be made to feel the clanging beating of the brain, the dead booming of the heart, the sickness of hopeless despair, the shrinking cowering of the spirit which they feel who have been hurled from a high estate, with heavy soul, to drink the dregs of poverty. I must have the mortgages, the—I O U’s—all! all! all!”

“No,” said Nathan, with a gloom hanging on his brow; “they are mine, obtained after long, long hard struggles. I shall retain them—I, too, have a purpose to serve, though even in this I act for another;” he raised his eyes upward. Then he added, hastily, “The hard-souled, proud, ambitious man, must be punished, but the mode of his punishment must, after all, I see, be left to me.”

Wilton, with feverish animation, urged his point, but Nathan Gomer was not to be moved, and the result of the conference was, that Wilton, to his deep mortification, was compelled to leave in the hands of Nathan the entire management of the recovery of the estates, and the punishment of his implacable foe.

Incidentally, Nathan alluded to Wilton’s intention with respect to Flora, and listened quietly to a recapitulation of what he had overheard, as well as to Wilton’s renewed expressions of determination that nothing should turn him from the decision at which he had arrived.

Nathan Gomer made no further comment upon it than to advise him to send away Lester Vane for the present, and to let the affair remain in abeyance until he was put into possession of the estates of which he had been so long deprived, to which advice Wilton assented.

It was immediately following this interview that Mr. Grahame received a letter from Nathan Gomer.

It was placed in his hands as he entered his house on the night of Charles Clinton’s interview with Evangeline.

He knew the handwriting at a glance. He snatched it from the hand of Whelks—he forbade him to follow, and he hurried, almost raced, up the staircase to his library.

He locked his door on entering the room, and flung the letter on the table, while he raised the faint light of the lamp to a brilliant glare.

“I do not like the look of that note!” he exclaimed; “I hate the handwriting. It is always the harbinger of intelligence which wrings my heart so that I could shriek with pain. Why is it that I have some spell hanging over me—a species of curse that embitters every joy I try to make my own? It is strange that in my securest moments I should ever have some accursed thing to intervene, and show me the rotten foundation of my assumptions. One fact, however, I am now at least certain of—I shall not die a pauper’s death, and, to confess the truth, it is an end I much feared.”

He took up the letter and held it to the light; he examined the superscription and then the seal; at last with a hasty “Pshaw!” he tore open the envelope and read—

“Sir,—The missing link, which so long prevented Mr. Wilton proving his rightful title to the Eglinton estates, has at length been discovered. Mr. Wilton’s solicitor has, at this moment, in his possession, all the documents essential to the prosecution of his client’s claim; Mr. Wilton has in consequence refused to complete the arrangements which were commenced, for a division of that large property between you and him. You will, therefore, perceive that the immediate return of the sums advanced by me to you, in accordance with our agreement, will be necessary to prevent my commencing an action for the recovery thereof.—I have the honour to remain, Sir, your obedient servant,”

“Nathan Gomer.”

Mr. Grahame read every word in the letter, clearly and distinctly the first time; the second time he perused it, his thoughts of the future thronged in his brain, and mixed themselves up with the words. He tried to read it a third time, but the lines waved up and down, the letters commingled, he threw it from him and sank into his chair.

He pressed his aching temples with his hands: they burned and throbbed violently: and he tried to think what would be the first step to be pursued.

He saw that it would be necessary to write to Nathan Gomer at once, and stave him off for a time with promises. He knew that if he did not answer his letter, he would commence to sue him, without further notice.

His next step was to send for Chewkle, and consult with him. He had quite expected that, according to promise, Maybee had been disposed of, but he felt that it would be a waste of time to speculate when action was essential. Chewkle had given to him necessary information how to communicate with him when he wished to do so, and he adopted the mode with which he had been furnished.

The letter to Gomer was dispatched, and Chewkle was communicated with, but as the latter was not in London, a week elapsed before he made his appearance. By arrangement, he adopted the same mode of entry as before, and made his way into the library by night from the garden. He was not sorry to avail himself of this plan, because it was not his wish, for several reasons that Nathan Gomer should become acquainted with his presence in London.

Mr. Grahame, when assured that they were not likely to be disturbed, laid Nathan’s letter before Chewkle.

The first three lines were enough for Chewkle. He slapped his thigh, and with an oath exclaimed—

“Brimstone’s got the best o’ me!”

“Explain,” said Mr. Grahame anxiously. But Mr. Chewkle could not explain—his double-faced roguery prevented him doing that. He evaded the question by saying—

“Never mind that now; I’ll explain how he’s done me at the proper time.”

He saw at once that Nathan Gomer had extracted from him, in some way, a clue to Josh Maybee, and had honoured him—Chewkle—with a commission to get him out of the way while he obtained possession of the prize.

Possession! He paused at the word. The Queen’s prison had possession of Maybee. Nathan Gomer, with all his cunning and artifice, he believed could not juggle him out of that place, for he had been incarcerated at the order of the Court of Chancery; and he knew that the detainer at the gate was not to be paid off. A long and tedious process in Chancery, he believed, must be gone through before the release of Maybee could be effected.

“Old sulphur phiz couldn’t get him out of there,” he soliloquised, “though he might have been able to get ’old of ’im and gammon a good deal out of ’im. It may not be altogether too late now; Maybee has a weakness for beer, and I knows what to drop in his pewter, to keep him from going into any Court o’ law—anywhere but to six foot by ten of clay.”

Mr. Grahame bent his gaze firmly upon Chewkle’s light gray eyes. He contracted his brows, and spoke only in whispers, but they were painfully audible, and had a strange, harsh sound which was disagreeable and discordant, even to the not oyer-refined ear of Mr. Chewkle.

“Why,” he said, “waste time over the poor wretch in prison? Let him live on; he has given up the documents, his presence in Court will be but of secondary importance. Now my bold and skilful friend Chewkle, if the principal dies—if Wilton was to be found dead—I—as I have before intimated to you—become, beyond all dispute, possessor of the property. Do you not understand?”

Chewkle gave a nod.

“He is an old man; feeble, with no physical strength,” continued Graliame, laying his hand on Chewkle’s rather muscular arm.

Chewkle nodded again.

“You know where he dwells—Harleydale Manor?”

“I know it,” said Chewkle.

“He is fond of walking in the evening, Chewkle. Now an old man may drop down in a wood, and die in an apoplectic fit, or fall over some of the hanging rocks which are on the estate. There are many ways a man may seem to have died a natural death, Chewkle, my friend.”

“I knows a good many ways,” said Chewkle thoughtfully. “It isn’t that: the thing is to manage so as not to be diskivered.”

“I do not think there is much fear of that,” responded Grahame with an affected assumption of its improbability.

“P’rhaps not,” returned Chewkle, “but it’s the danger to number von as I looks at. However, I dessay I can put that right if everything else is squared to make it worth my while.”

Mr. Grahame produced a Bank of England note for fifty pounds.

“Here, my good Chewkle, is an earnest of my future intentions towards you,” he observed, with a furtive glance at the man’s somewhat excited countenance, as he placed the note in the scoundrel’s trembling fingers.

It immediately disappeared like magic in his vest. He turned, with a grin, to his employer, and said——

“It shall be done, sir.”

“At once,” urged Grahame, quickly; “it is essential that no time should be lost. I should go, if I were you, by the earliest train to-morrow morning.”

“All right, sir. You’ll hear of it afore the week’s out in the papers.”

“My best friend. How deeply I shall stand indebted to you.”

“Yes,” thought Chewkle, “rayther deeper than you imagines, I think.”

But he said aloud—

“Let me see: I’m supposed to be at Liverpool, which is a good thing, for even old Gummy won’t suspect my being at Harleydale, and I shall quietly watch for the old man taking his evening walk—the last p’rambulation on earth for ’im, at all events.”

Mr. Grahame shuddered.

He felt anxious to get rid of his villainous companion.

“I think we understand each other now,” he remarked, in a tone which intimated that he wished the interview to terminate.

“Yes,” replied Chewkle, with a very meaning nod, “I think we do understand each other now, and it’s my belief we shall understand one another better by and bye. Good night, sir.”

“Good night—good night,” cried Mr. Grahame, hastily, and added: “Be careful how you descend the staircase, it is narrow, the night is dark, and an accident just now would be unfortunate.”

“To me; but what if I had old Wilton here,” suggested Chewkle, with a savage cackle.

“Hush! hush!” exclaimed Grahame, in a whisper, “not so loud. Mind how you go, do not let the servants discover you, whatever you do, and, above all, be sure to neglect no precaution which may tend to ensure the success of your enterprise.”

Chewkle waved his hand exultingly, and disappeared.

The next morning he was on his way towards Harleydale Manor, bent on executing his murderous mission.