George, I want to tell you something.’

George and Bess were sitting upstairs in the little room which they occupied in Heckett’s house. Josh had fallen into a doze, and Bess, who had nursed him devotedly, had stolen upstairs to her husband, for her mind was troubled.

She had been round to Mrs. Jarvis that morning, and Mrs. Jarvis had started off down to the late Squire Heritage’s with a note for Gertie.

The sands of the old man’s life were running fast, and he yearned for the presence of his granddaughter—‘Gertie’s gal,’ as he called her.

Bess had seen the Jarvises once or twice, for hers was not a nature to forget such service as these simple, good-hearted people had rendered her and her husband in their hour of peril.

Mr. Jarvis had emerged from his adventure with the police with flying colours. They were unable to obtain the slightest proof that he had ever thoroughly harboured the runaway, since he had boldly declared that when the detectives had the confounded impudence to come searching for convicts at his residence he had declared they should find one, and so had donned the clothes which he had found in Mrs. Smith’s rooms.

‘Oh,’ said the Inspector, ‘then he was there?’

‘Of course he was,’ answered Mr. Jarvis; ‘the gentleman came to see his wife, but he didn’t stop. I didn’t know as he was a conwick; he didn’t come and say “Guvnor, I’m a conwick,” he dissembled, like willuns always does in the dramer. I thought he was a respectable cove come from a woyage.’

‘Then why didn’t you say he had been at your house when the officer came with a warrant, instead of deceiving him?’

‘Deceiving him!’ exclaimed Mr. Jarvis; ‘me deceive the police! Get out, guvuor! Why, I wouldn’t do it. I tell you, I put on the clos for to see if they’d fit me, ’cos I’m a-going to play a conwick in a new drama what my son wrote for the show. Clever boy he is, I can tell you; he’ll be a writer for Drury Lane afore long.’

‘Nevermind about Drury Lane,’ said the Inspector. ‘Why did you deceive the officer?’

‘I’m a cornin’ to it; you can’t have all five hacs at once, yer know. Well, I was a-tryin’ on the clos, when my missus calls up as the perlice is at the door. “This is hockard, I sez, goessin’ what they wanted; ’blest if they won’t take me for the conwick!” So I hides under the bed, not a-wantin’ for to be dragged through the streets for the public to see the part gratis, as might interfere with the receipts, ’cos if the public can see you for nothink as a conwick they ain’t likely for to pay, are they?’

It was in vain that the Inspector cross-examined the showman; the latter stuck to his talc, and produced undoubted evidence of his respectability.

‘Of course,’ said the Inspector, ‘we could charge you with being in possession of the Government clothing, you know.’

Mr. Jarvis looked down the convict’s suit.

‘These the Government’s clothes!’ he exclaimed, with a comic look of astonishment. ‘Well, I should advise the Government to change its tailor.’

Mr. Jarvis was at last allowed to return to his home, but not before Mrs. Jarvis had been sent for to bring him a suit to return in. The convict’s dress was retained at the station, and Mr. Jarvis was informed that he might go home, but he might be charged at any time.

The Inspector, who was a shrewd man, fancied that it was quite possible, if there was collusion, by watching Mr. Jarvis, the police might come upon the escaped felon.

But George never left Heckett’s house when once he got into it, and Bess was so thickly veiled, and had so altered her style of dress, that the men, who had only had an occasional glimpse of her oncc, quite failed to recognise her as the convict’s wife on the one or two occasions that she called at the Jarvises’.

Early on the morning on which the events to be narrated in this chapter happened, Bess had been round, and despatched Mrs. Jarvis with a note to Gertie, at Heritage Hall, bidding her accompany the messenger if she would see her old grandfather alive.

‘George, I want to tell you something.’

George looked up.

‘What is it, my darling? No bad news, I hope?’

Bess put her arms round her husband’s neck.

‘I don’t think you’ll blame me, dear, for what I did. Now that unhappy man is dead who caused us all our trouble, I think you will be glad. I warned his wife, George, of what was going to be done.’

For a moment George looked doubtfully in his wife’s eyes. Then he stooped down and kissed her tenderly.

‘Bess, my own faithful, long-suffering little wife, you might have ruined all, but you obeyed the promptings of your woman’s heart. The shadow of his fate cannot rest upon us now. We dragged no loving wife through such misery as he dragged you.’

‘I did it for the best, George.’

‘I know it, my darling. It was God who sent you on your errand of mercy: We shall but have to wait a little longer. God will lift the stain from my name, and let the whole world see my innocence in His own way. Something tells me that the days of our pilgrimage are nearly over.’

Bess took her husband’s hand.

‘Do you remember, George, how we used to arrange in our old days, before the trouble came, what we would do when we had made a fortune?’

George sighed.

‘Ah! they were happy days—happy dreams. But there may be a bright future before us yet.’

Bess knew that George, in his heart of hearts, would approve what she had done, but she dared not tell him before, lest it should seem that she too was leagued with his enemies.

But when the news of Marston’s death came, she was thankful that no act of theirs had helped him to his doom. She had seen Ruth but once, and had read her goodness in her face.

The woman’s heart of George Heritage’s wife went over in sympathy to the woman whose husband might one day be torn from her arms, and she determined at least to warn her of the peril that encompassed them.

She thanked God all her life that she had done so, and she thanked God that all his trouble and his great wrongs had not crushed out all tenderness and human sympathy from the big, noble heart of George Heritage, her husband and her idol.