The girl rose slowly from the ground, after the two men had disappeared, and, still sobbing heavily, made her way towards the door which led to the upper part of the house. But her mother, brought to herself by the movement, advanced rapidly, and caught her in her arms.

“Child,” she said, in a sort of gasp—“this ain’t no time for callin’ folks names, or talkin’ about rights and wrongs. Quick—what’s i’ the wind? I see Master Dandy a lookin’ in at that winder—straight at me; what’s i’ the wind, child—and w’ere have they gone?”

For some moments, Clara Siggs could not speak; her sobs seemed to shake her from head to foot. But, after a little time, she grew more calm, and told what she knew.

“I saw him—looking in at the window; he beckoned to me. Then, when I slipped out to him, I was frightened at first, because he seemed so worn-looking, and so strange. But he kept saying, again and again, that he wanted to see you—that he could not go away, without seeing you. And, in spite of all they have said, I could not believe, somehow, when I looked into his eyes, that he could have done such a cruel and wicked deed as that.” Here her sobs broke out afresh, so that Betty had much ado to comfort her.

“There, there—don’t cry, child,” she said. “Crying never mended any think yet. Wot else did ’e say?”

“He asked who the man was with us; and, when I told him, he laughed, and said he would give him a run for his money, anyway.”

“Spoke like a Chater—that was!” cried Betty, with considerable pride. “Then wot ’appened?”

“Master Dandy said that as it wouldn’t be safe to see you, he would make across the fields, so as to get clear of Bamberton, and walk on the way to London. Then, as I was crying, he put his arm round my shoulders—indeed, indeed, there was no shame in it, mother dear—and told me not to mind, for he would clear himself yet. And just at that moment, I heard a rustling in the hedge, and Harry jumped through.”

Toby Siggs looked long at his daughter; slowly shook his head; and delivered himself of this piece of wisdom. “The good Lord, with the willin’ ’elp of yer mother, made ye fair-lookin’ an’ put bright eyes into your face; but neither the good Lord nor your mother meant as ’ow they should be a snare, or in any way deludin’. One lad is good enough for the best o’ gels. Go to bed—an’ think well on it!”

Clara, still sobbing, took her way slowly upstairs. For a long time, Toby Siggs and his wife sat in whispered conversation; Toby saying but little, but probably thinking the more. The shadow of that crime in the wood seemed to have fallen even on that quiet household; Betty Siggs watched the dying fire; and her mind travelled back, through the years to the farm in Australia, on the edge of the Bush, and to the bright-faced lad that cruel Bush had swallowed up, and snatched from her. Old Toby Siggs knew the story; for, when first he had met her, she had had to account for the presence of the child; but Toby was a silent man, and the lost boy was as far back in the mists of the dead years, as in the mists of Toby’s brain.

“It’s all been a muddle, Toby,” said Mrs. Siggs at last, still in the same cautious whisper. “If the old Squire could only know what has happened, I think ’e’d be a bit sorry ’e cast that boy loose, an’ took up with the younger. Lor’, Toby—wot a boy ’e was!”

Toby nodded his head slowly. “Ah!” he ejaculated. “There ain’t no up-settin’ about me, or about you, ole gal; we knows ourselves for ordinary folk. But that boy moved, and talked, and ’eld ’isself like a gen’leman.”

“That ’e did!” replied Betty, with a vigorous nod. “Lor’, Toby—if ’e’d ’ave bin at the ’All—we’d ’ave ’ad no talks about pore ruined gals; no policemen in the ’ouse—no ’untin’ an’ dodgin’ an’ ’idin’ like this. God knows ’ow it’s all goin’ to end, Toby.”

The house had been shut, so far as its public capacity was concerned, for some time. Knowing, however, that the Inspector must presently make his appearance, and that, in any case, his bed was reserved for him, Mrs. Siggs and her husband sat on over the fire, each filled with sad thoughts, and ready, from the events of the evening, for anything which could happen.

Presently there came a heavy knock at the front door; Mrs. Siggs, with a hand on her ample bosom, started, and looked appealingly at Toby. That gentleman, rising with a determined countenance, proceeded to the door, and flung it open. Exactly what he was prepared to see, it is impossible to say; but he was certainly not prepared for the sight which met his eyes.

Out of the darkness there staggered into the place a solitary figure—that of Inspector Tokely. His hat was gone—one side of his face was grazed and bleeding; he was covered with mud and water almost from head to foot; and his coat was torn right across one shoulder. Gasping and weary, he shook a fist in the face of the astonished Toby Siggs, and snapped out his wrath at that innocent man.

“You scoundrel!” he shouted—“You infernal villain! This is all a plot—a conspiracy—you know it is! I’m lured out of this place, and go racing and chasing across country—where there are no street lamps as there ought to be, and no constables to whistle for. I bark my face against a tree—put there on purpose, I’ve no doubt, for me to run my head against; I fall into a ditch, which ought to have been drained long ago; I lose my hat, which cost nine-and-sixpence; I tear my coat on a barbed wire fence, which ought never to have been put up. And—to crown it all—I lose my prisoner!”

Betty Siggs, who had come to the door of the little parlour, suddenly clapped her hands and cried out—with an exclamation of so much relief, that the Inspector turned savagely upon her.

“Yes, Ma’am—laugh—giggle—clap your hands—scream with joy, Ma’am! I like it—it does me good! How will you like it, when you appear in the dock—the dock, Ma’am!—on a charge of aiding and abetting a prisoner, to escape? What about windows covered with curtains——”

“What would you ’ave ’em covered with?” retorted Betty, with a laugh—“wall paper?”

“Never mind, Ma’am—never mind,” retorted Tokely, viciously. “At the present moment, Ma’am, I will go to bed. The Law, Ma’am, can wait. Prepare yourself, Ma’am, for the dock—for the dock, I say!”

With these words, and utterly scornful of Betty Siggs’s peals of laughter, the Inspector made his way upstairs to his chamber—leaving a trail of muddy water to mark his passage.

“That chap’s done me good!” exclaimed Betty, wiping her eyes, and turning to Toby, who was staring in ludicrous amazement after Tokely. “I just wanted summink to stir me up—I did—an’ that chap’s done it!”

“You take care, ole gal, that ’e don’t stir you up,” retorted Toby, shaking his head. “The Law ’as got a ’eap be’ind it—an’ you ain’t got the figger to be redooced by skilly, nor the fingers for oakum-pickin’. An’, mark my words, that’s what you’ll come to, ole gal, if you mocks at the Law!”

Betty Siggs, however, was in too good a humour to heed any such warning; she gaily locked up the house, extinguished the lights and pushed Toby upstairs to bed. “Blow the Law!” she exclaimed, kissing him—“You an’ me won’t sleep the less sound, because the Law ’as got its face scratched, and lost its ’at—will we, Toby?”

Nevertheless, Betty’s prediction proved to be, so far as she was concerned, a false one; sleep refused to come to her, no matter how she wooed it. Living, as she always had done, a good brisk hard-working blameless life, with a conscience as clear as her own healthy skin, Betty had known nothing of the terrors of insomnia; yet to-night, she lay blinking at the stars peeping in through the uncurtained window, thinking of many things—thinking most of all, perhaps, of the unhappy man flying for his life, hiding in ditches and under hedges, and trembling at every sound. Betty’s tender heart melted a little when she thought of him, and she sadly cried herself into a state of quiet exhaustion, and so fell into a troubled sleep.

And in that sleep she dreamed a dream. She was back again, in the old days, in Australia, at Tallapoona Farm—the farm which had never paid, and from which that bright-faced boy Philip had wandered out one morning, never to return. Yet the curious part of Betty’s dream was this; that, although the sights and sounds beyond the windows were as she had known them over a quarter of a century ago, the house bore a curious resemblance to the Chater Arms; indeed, faces familiar to her later days in Bamberton passed to and fro before the windows, and the slow Bamberton drawl was in her ears.

But, in her dream, night came swiftly on, and the place was in darkness. She thought she stood again in the little parlour alone; and, drawing back the curtain from before the window, looked out upon the sandy bridle-tracks, and wild vegetation which fringed the denser growth beyond. Suddenly, out of this, and coming straight to the window, she saw the child, just as she had known him eighteen long years before. So vivid was the dream, and so clearly did she see his face, and recognise it, that—waking with a cry upon her lips—she found herself out of bed, and standing on the floor, in the faint light of the stars.

Betty Siggs was more troubled than ever. She looked round the room, as though half expecting to see her dream realised; rubbed her eyes, and began to tremble a little. Toby’s regular breathing reassured her somewhat; but still she felt uneasy. The window at which she had seen the face of the man that night, in reality, and the dream-face of the child, haunted her; she felt that she must go to it—must assure herself that there was nothing on the other side of it.

She threw a long cloak round her, noiselessly lit a candle, and crept out of the room. There was no sound anywhere, save the quick patter of her own feet on the stairs, and the rapid scurry of a mouse flying from the light. Betty reached the parlour, set down her candle, and faced the window, over which the curtain had been drawn again.

Now, under all the circumstances, it is probable that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have hesitated, at that hour, to draw back that curtain; and the hundredth would have done it—if at all—out of sheer bravado. But the curious thing was, that Betty had no fear of it at all; so completely was she dominated by her dream, and so much did she seem to be dreaming still, that she walked up to the curtain, and softly drew it aside.

Nor did she think it strange, under the circumstances, that there was a face upon the other side; for, although she believed she looked upon Dandy Chater, somehow the dream face had got mixed up with it; the dream-eyes of the child she believed dead smiled at her, out of the face of the man. Still keeping her eyes upon the window, she slipped along to the door and softly drew the bolt, and opened it; and then—for no known reason, and yet for some reason which seemed strong within her—began to tremble very much, as though she faced something uncanny.

A figure moved towards the door, slipped into the room, and took her in his arms. Not Dandy Chater—not the man with a price on his head, and blood on his cruel hands—not the man whose name was a by-word and a reproach in all that countryside; but her boy—her dear lad, back from his grave thousands of miles away! You couldn’t have tried to deceive old Betty Siggs at that moment; she knew that no other arms could hold her like that.

Then, when he called her—as he had done all those long years before—“little mother”—when he whispered, did she remember Tallapoona Farm, and the mare with the rat-tail, and Peter the sheep-dog—and a dozen other things that would have stamped him as her boy, if nothing else could have done; old Betty woke from her dream, and burst into a flood of tears, and laid her old grey head down on his shoulder.

Perhaps it was well that Toby was sleeping soundly above. For, if he had happened to dream, and had wandered, in his night apparel, down to that same parlour, he would have been very properly scandalised. For here was the supposed Dandy Chater, sitting near the table, with Betty Siggs—(hugging him mighty tight round the neck)—on his knee—the while he rapidly sketched out all that happened in those eighteen years.

“Ah—little mother—little mother!” he said, drawing her face down, that he might kiss it—“You didn’t know to whom you were talking, when I strolled in here the other day, and you read me a lecture on the sins of Dandy Chater. It’s been a long time, little mother; picked up, more dead than alive, by an exploring party in the Bush; taken with them miles into the interior; then more miles, by a party bound for the West, with whom they came in contact. Then, five or six years of life with a dear old couple, who had no chicks of their own, and were fond of the friendless boy thrown on their hands. Then, when I could, I went back to Tallapoona—only to find that you had gone to England—no one exactly knew where.”

“An’ you kep’ a thought of me all those years—did you, Phil?” whispered the old woman, proudly.

“Yes—and came back to you as soon as I could. At least—not to you, because I didn’t know where you were. But I remembered the story you had told me; and I knew I had the right to the place which had been my father’s. But I would not have turned out my brother; my idea was that we might live together peaceably, sharing what there was. But he is dead.”

She looked round at him, with a startled face; and he realised, in a moment, that he had given her the clue to the whole mystery. Therefore, with much pains and many pauses to allow her to fully digest the extraordinary story, he told her of the whole business; of his arrival in England—of his discovery of the strange likeness between himself and the real Dandy Chater; and of his determination, on discovering that his brother was dead, to trade upon it. Of his certainty that his brother had been murdered; and of the impossibility of fixing the crime upon any one’s shoulders.

But Betty Siggs saw only with the limited vision of love; knew only that her boy was with her again, and that he was innocent of the crime she had unconsciously laid to his charge.

“Lor’—this’ll be news for Toby!” she cried; “this’ll be something to laugh at in the village; that they’ve taken my boy for Dandy Chater, and called him names, and ’unted ’im with perlice and sich like——”

“Stop—stop!” he cried, hurriedly. “Not a word of this to a soul, little mother—not a word. Don’t you see the position in which I stand? My brother is dead; I have upon me, at the present moment, his clothes, his papers—his valuables. Good God, little mother—I’ve traded on his name, and on his appearance; I’m mixed up in I know not what shady things concerning him. Turn to any living soul about here to-night—save yourself—and tell my story. They will laugh you to scorn; will deride your boy, who’s come back from the grave. Don’t you see that their first question would naturally be—‘If you are not Dandy Chater—you who wear his clothes, and use his name, and hide by night, because of his sins—if you are not the man, where is he?’ And, Heaven help me—what am I to answer them?”

Betty Siggs seemed altogether nonplussed, and could only shake her head. Philip, with his arm about her, did his best to cheer her up again.

“Come—you mustn’t be down-hearted; I’ll pull through, somehow or other,” he said. “But, for the time, I must keep out of the way. Every day I’m getting nearer to the truth about my brother’s death; every day I seem to see my way more clearly. But I don’t want to be accused of his murder—for they might say, with perfect justice, that I murdered him, the better to take his place. No—I want to track down the real man; when that time comes, I’ll call on you to speak. Until then, you must be silent as the grave.”

“I can’t—I can’t!” cried Betty Siggs. “Is my dear boy to come back to me, after all these years—and am I to see ’im ’unted an’ drove like this ’ere, by a mere common Tokely—an’ say nothink? Not me!” Betty Siggs folded her arms, and nodded her head with much determination.

“Little mother—little mother!” he exclaimed—“do you want to ruin me? Do you want to undo all that I have tried so hard to bring about? Shall I tell you something more?—something to be hidden deep in that good heart of yours, and never breathed to any one? Betty—you don’t mind my calling you Betty—do you?—have you ever been in love?”

“P’raps you’d like to ask Toby, as is a snorin’ ’is ’ead off upstairs this very minute,” retorted Mrs. Siggs, with a very becoming blush. “In love, indeed!”

“Well then, you will understand my difficulty. I’m in love, little mother—and with the sweetest girl in all the world. But even in that, my ill-luck dogs me; for she believes that her lover is Dandy Chater, whom she has known for years; if she once heard that she had whispered her words of love and tenderness and sympathy to a stranger—do you think that she would look at me again? Little mother—it’s the maddest thing in the world; because, if she has any regard for me as Dandy Chater, she knows me for everything that’s bad and vile—food only for the common hangman; while, on the other hand, as Philip Chater I am a stranger, and farther from her than ever. In any case, it is hopeless; yet, knowing that whatever sympathy she has is given to Dandy Chater, I’ll be Dandy Chater to the end—whatever that end may be. And even you, little mother, shall not change that purpose. So don’t talk about it.”

She recognised—however unwillingly—that what he said was true; although she cried a little—partly for love of him, partly in terror at his danger—she yet was comforted by the feeling that all the sad years of mourning were swept away, and that the boy she had reared and loved had fulfilled her most sanguine expectations and had grown to the manhood she had pictured for him.

He got up, and took her tenderly in his arms again, to say good-bye. “It won’t be long, little mother,” he said, “before I come again to you, and take my place in my father’s home. But, for the present, I want you to swear to me—to swear to me on something you love well—that you will not betray my secret. Betty—for the love of your boy—swear to me that you will not betray me—will not take from me the love of the woman who is more to me than anything else in the wide world. Swear to me!”

With tears in her honest old eyes, she drew his head down, and kissed him. “I’ll swear to you, Phil,” she said—“by that!”

He ran out into the darkness, and left her standing, in the light of the candle, in the little parlour.