When a house is popularly allowed to be haunted, and its inmates grow thin and white and restless, it is not the best place in the world for children: and this was supposed by Church Dykely to be the reason why Mrs. Nash Caromel the Second had never allowed her child to come home since the death of its father. At first it was said that she would not risk having him lest he should catch the fever Nash had died of: but, when the weeks went on, and the months went on, and years (so far as could be seen) were likely to go on, and still the child was kept away, people put it down to the other disagreeable fact.

Any way, Mrs. Nash Caromel—or Charlotte Nave, as you please—did not have the boy home. Little Dun was kept at his grandfather’s, Lawyer Nave; and Miss Harriet Nave took care of him: the other sister, Gwinny, remaining at Caromel’s Farm. Towards the close of spring, the spring which followed the death of Nash, when Dun was about two years old, he caught whooping-cough and had it badly. In August he was sent for change of air to a farm called the Rill, on the other side of Pershore, Miss Harriet Nave taking the opportunity to go jaunting off elsewhere. The change of air did the child good, and he was growing strong quickly, when one night early in September croup attacked him, and he lay in great danger. News of it was sent to his mother in the morning. It drove her nearly wild with fear, and she set off for the Rill in a gig, her father driving it: as already spoken of. So rare was the sight of her now, for she kept indoors at Caromel’s Farm as a snail keeps to its shell, that no wonder Church Dykely thought it an event, and talked of it all the day.

Mr. Nave and his daughter reached the Rill—which lay across country, somewhere between Pershore and Wyre—in the course of the morning, and found little Dun gasping with croup, and inhaling steam from a kettle. Moore told us there was nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream; but to Charlotte Nave, otherwise Caromel, there was nothing sweet at all except this little Dun. He was the light of her existence; the apple of her eye, to put it poetically. She sat down by the bed-side, her pale face (so pale and thin to what it used to be) bent lovingly upon him, and wiping away the tears by stealth that came into her eyes. In the afternoon Dun was better; but the doctor would not say he was out of danger.

“If I could but stay here for the night! I can’t bear to leave him,” Charlotte snatched an opportunity to say to her father, when their friends, the farmer and his wife, were momentarily occupied.

“But you can’t, you know,” returned Lawyer Nave. “You must be home by sunset.”

“By sunset? Nay, an hour after that would do.”

“No, it will not do. Better be on the safe side.”

“It seems cruel that I should have to leave him,” she exclaimed, with a sob.

“Nonsense, Charlotte! The child will do as well without you as with you. You may see for yourself how much better he is. The farm cannot be left to itself at night: remember that. We must start in half-an-hour.”

No more was said. Nave went to see about getting ready the gig; Charlotte, all down in the dumps, stayed with the little lad, and let him pull about as he would her golden hair, and drank her tea by his side. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (good hospitable people, who had stood by Charlotte Nave through good report and ill report, believing no ill of her) pressed her to stay all night, promising, however, that every care should be taken of Duncan, if she did not.

“My little darling must be a good child and keep warm in bed, and when mamma comes in the morning he will be nearly well,” breathed Charlotte, showering tears and kisses upon him when the last moment had come. And, with that, she tore herself away.

“Such a pity that you should have to go!” said Mrs. Smith, stepping to the door with her. “I think Gwendolen and old Grizzel might have been left for one night: they’d not have run away, nor the house neither. Come over as soon as you can in the morning, my dear; and see if you can’t make arrangements to stay a day or two.”

They were starting from the back-door, as being the nearest and handiest; Nave, already in the gig, seemed in a rare hurry to be off. Mr. Smith helped Charlotte up: and away the lawyer drove, across the fold-yard, one of the farm-boys holding the outer gate open for them. The sun, getting down in the west, shone right in their eyes.

“Oh dear, I have left my parasol!” cried Charlotte, just as they reached the gate. “I must have it: my blue parasol!” And Nave, giving an angry growl to parasols in general, pulled the horse up.

“You need not get out, hindering time!” growled he. “Call out for it. Here, Smith! Mrs. Caromel has forgotten her blue parasol.” But the farmer, then nearing the house, did not hear.

“I’ll run for it, ma’am,” said the lad. And he set off to do so, leaving the gate to itself. Charlotte, who had been rising to get out, looked back to watch him; the lawyer looked back to shout again, in his impatience, to Mr. Smith. Their faces were both turned from the side where the gate was, and they did not see what was about to happen.

The gate, swinging slowly and noiselessly forward, touched the horse, which had been standing sideways, his head turned to see what the stoppage might be about.

Touched him, and startled him. Bounding upwards, he tore forward down the narrow lane on which the gate opened; tried to scale a bank, and pitched the lawyer and Charlotte out of the gig.

The farmer, and as many of his people as could be gathered at the moment, came running down, some of them armed with pitchforks. Nave was groaning as he lay; Charlotte was insensible. Just at first they thought her dead. Both were carried back to the Rill on hurdles, and the doctor was sent for. After which, Mr. Smith started off a man on horseback to tell the ill-news of the accident at Caromel Farm.

Ill-news. No doubt a bad and distressing accident. But now, see how curiously the “power that shapes our ends” brings things about. But for that accident, the mystery and the wrong being played out at Caromel’s Farm might never have had daylight thrown upon it. The accident, like a great many other accidents, must have been sent to this wise and good end. At least, so far as we, poor blind mortals that we all are, down here, might presume to judge.

The horseman, clattering in at a hard pace to Caromel’s Farm, delivered to Miss Gwendolen Nave, and to Grizzel, the old family servant, the tidings he was charged with—improving upon them as a thing of course.

Lawyer Nave, he were groaning awful, all a-bleeding, and unable to move a limb. The young lady, she were dead; leastways, looked like it.

With a scream and a cry, Gwendolen gave orders for her own departure. Seeking the bailiff, she bade him drive her over in the tax-cart, there being no second gig.

“Now mind, Grizzel,” she said, laying hold of the old woman’s arm after flinging on her bonnet and shawl anyhow, “you will lock all the doors as soon as I am gone, and take out the keys. Do you hear?”

“I hear, Miss Gwinny. My will’s good to do it: you know that.”

“Take care that you do do it.”

Fine tidings to go flying about Church Dykely in the twilight! Lawyer Nave half killed, his daughter quite. The news reached us at Dyke Manor; and Squire Todhetley, though holding Caromel’s Farm in little estimation, thought it only neighbourly to walk over there and inquire how much was true, how much not. You remember what happened. That in leaving the farm after interviewing Grizzel, we found ourselves in contact with Dobbs the blacksmith. Dobbs standing stock-still, like a marble pillar, outside the gate under the dark, overhanging trees; Dobbs standing on the watch, in a stealthy, mysterious manner, without his boots.

“But what on earth are you here for, Dobbs?” reiterated the Squire. “Where are your boots?”

And all Dobbs did for answer, was to lay his hand respectfully on the Squire’s coat-sleeve to begin with, so as to prevent his running away. Then he entered upon his whispered tale. Leaning our arms upon the low gate, we listened to it, and to the curious sound of weeping and wailing that stole faintly on our ears from amongst the garden trees. The scene altogether looked weird enough in the moonlight, flickering through the rustling leaves.

Dobbs, naturally an unbeliever in ghosts, had grown to think that this ghost, so long talked of, was no ghost at all, but some one got up to resemble one by Caromel’s Farm, for some mysterious purpose of its own. Remembering his attack of fright, and resenting it excessively, Dobbs determined if possible to unearth the secret: and this was the third night he had come upon the watch.

“But why stand without your boots?” whispered the Squire, who could not get over the shoeless feet.

“That I may make no noise in running to pounce upon him, sir,” Dobbs whispered back. “I take ’em off and hide ’em in the copse behind here. They be just at your back, Master Johnny.”

“Pounce upon whom?” demanded the Squire. “Can’t you speak plainly?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” breathed Dobbs. “I feel nearly sure, Squire, that the—the thing looking like Nash Caromel is not Nash Caromel. Nor his ghost, either.”

“I never saw two faces more alike, and I have just seen it now,” put in the Squire. “At least, as much as a shadow can look like a face.”

“Ay,” assented Dobbs. “I’m as sure, sir, as I am of my own forge, that it is a likeness got up by Nave to scare us. And I’ll eat the forge,” added Dobbs with emphasis, “if there’s not something worse than ghosts at Caromel’s Farm—though I can’t guess what it is.”

“What a villain he must be: and Nave, too!” cried the Squire, rubbing his red nose, while Tod simply stared at the man. “But, look here, Dobbs—how could any man put on the face of Nash Caromel?”

“I don’t know how he does it, Squire, or what he does, but I’m good to find out,” returned the blacksmith. “And if—just hark there again, sirs!”

The same faint sounds of wailing, of entreaty in a woman’s voice, rose again upon the air. Dobbs, with a gesture to ask for silence, went noiselessly down the dark path in his brown woollen stockings, that looked thick enough for boots. Tod, eager for any adventure, stole after him, and I brought up the rear. The Squire remained where he was, and held the gate open, expecting perhaps that we might want to make a rush through it as he had just done.

Two minutes more, and the mystery was solved. Near the house, under the shade of the closely intersecting trees, stood old Grizzel and the figure people had taken to be the ghost of Nash Caromel. It was Grizzel’s voice we heard, full of piteous entreaty to him not to do something.

“Just for this night, master, for the love of Heaven! Don’t do it, just this night that I’m left in charge! They’ve trusted me, you see!”

The words seemed to make no impression. Pushing her hands back, the figure was turning impatiently away, when Dobbs seized upon it.

But, in sheer astonishment, or perhaps in terror, Dobbs let go again to step backwards; and the prize might have escaped but for the strong arms of Tod. It was indeed Nash Caromel. Not his ghost, but himself.

Nash Caromel worn to the veriest shadow mortal eyes ever gazed upon. The Squire came up; we all went into the house together, and explanation ensued.

Nash had not died. When the fever, of which it was feared he would die, reached its crisis, he awoke to life, not to death. But, terrified at his position—the warrant, applied for by Henry Tinkle, being out against him—overwhelmed with a sense of shame, he had feigned death as the only chance of escaping disgrace and punishment. The first thought perhaps was Nave’s; indeed there was no doubt of it—or his and his daughter’s combined. They wanted to keep the income, you see. Any way, they carried the thought out, and had successfully contrived to deceive doctors, undertakers, and the world. Nash, weak as a rat, had got out of bed to watch his own funeral procession wind down the avenue.

And there, in the upper rooms of the house, he had since lived until now, old Grizzel sharing the secret. But a grievous complaint, partly brought on by uneasiness of mind, partly inherited from his father, who had died of it, had speedily attacked Nash, one for which there was no cure. It had worn him to a shadow.

He had walked in the garden sometimes. He had come out in the twilight of the evening or at night; he had now and then passed through the gate and crossed over to the copse; simply because to live entirely without fresh air, to remain inactive indoors, was intolerable to him. His wife and her sister did their best to prevent it. Nave came in the daytime and would blow him up by the hour together; but they could not always keep him in. At last they grew alarmed. For, when they attempted to use force, by locking the doors, he told them that unless he was allowed his way in this, he would declare himself to the world. Life could not have been a bed of roses for any of them.

To look at him, as he sat there to-night by the kitchen fire, his cheeks white and hollow, his sunken eyes encased in dark rims, and his thin lips on the shiver, you’d hardly have given him a week of life. A great pity sat in the blacksmith’s face.

“Don’t reproach yourself, Dobbs: it’s the best thing that could have happened to me,” spoke Nash Caromel, kindly. “I am not sure but I should have gone out this very night and declared myself. Grizzel thought it, and put herself into a paroxysm of fear. Nobody but myself knows the yearning to do it that has been upon me. You won’t go and tell it out in the market-place, will you, Dobbs?”

“I’ll not tell on’t to a single soul, sir,” said Dobbs, earnestly, standing straight in his brown stockings. “Nobody shall know on’t from me. And I’m as glad as glad can be that you be alive and did not die in that fever.”

“We are all safe and sure, Caromel; not a hint shall escape us,” spoke the Squire from the midst of his astonishment.

“The first thing must be to get Duffham here.”

“Duffham can’t do any good; things have gone too far with me,” said poor Nash. “Once this disorder lays regular hold of a man, there’s no hope for him: you know that, Todhetley.”

“Stuff!” said the pater. “I don’t believe it has gone too far, only you’ve got moped here and think so. We’ll have Duffham here at once. You boys can go for him.”

“No,” dissented Caromel. “Duffham may tell the tale abroad. I’d rather die in peace, if I can.”

“Not he. Duffham! Why, you ought to know him better. Duffham will be as secret as ourselves. Do you suppose that he, a family doctor, has not many a weighty secret to keep? Come, be off, lads: and, mind, we trust you.”

Nash Caromel sighed, and said no more. He had been wanting badly enough to see a friend or two, but not to be shown up to the parish. We went out with Dobbs, who rushed into the copse to find his shoes.

This discovery might never have ensued, I take it, had Charlotte Nave and the lawyer not been upset in the gig. They would have stood persistently in his light—perhaps have succeeded in locking him in by force! As it was, we had it all our own way.

“How could you lend yourself to so infamous a deception?” cried the Squire to old Grizzel, following her into the pantry to ask it, when she returned from bolting the door after us. “I’m not at all sure that you could not be punished for it. It’s—it’s a conspiracy. And you, of all people, old Grizzel, to forget the honour of the Caromels! Why, you lived with his father!—and with his brother. All these years!”

“And how could I tell again him when I was asked not to?” contended Grizzel, the tears dropping on to a tin saucepan she was rubbing out. “Master Nash was as dear to me as the others were. Could it be me to speak up and say he was not in the coffin, but only old things to make up weight! Could it be me to tell he was alive and hiding up aloft here, and so get him put in prison? No, sir; the good name of the Caromels was much to me, but Master Nash was more.”

“Now, come, old woman, where’s the use of crying like that? Well, yes; you have been faithful, and it’s a great virtue. And—and there’s a shilling or two for you.”

“Have you been blowing her up?” asked Nash, as the Squire went back to him, and sat down on the other side the wide kitchen hearth, the fire throwing its glow upon the bricks, square and red and shining, and upon Nash Caromel’s wan face, in which it was not very difficult to read death. He had put his out-of-door coat off, a long brown garment, and sat in a grey suit. Tho Squire’s belief was that he wouldn’t have minded getting into the fire itself; he sat there shivering and shaking, and seeming to have no warmth left in him. The room was well guarded from outer observation. The shutters were up, and there was not a chink in them.

“I have,” said the Squire, in answer. “Told her she did not show much regard for the honour of the family—lending herself to such a deception!”

“Poor old Grizzel!” sighed Nash, with a half-smile. “She has lived upon thorns, fearing I should be discovered. As to the family honour, Todhetley, the less said about that the better.”

“How could you do it, Caromel?”

“I don’t know,” answered Nash, with apathy, bringing his face closer to the blaze. “I let it be done, more than did it. All I did, or could do, was just to lie still in my bed. The fever had left me weaker than a child——”

“Did it really turn to typhus?” interrupted the Squire.

“No, it didn’t. They said so to scare people away. I was weaker than a child,” continued Nash, “both in mind and body. And when I grew stronger—what was done could not be undone. Not that I seek to defend or excuse myself. Don’t think that.”

“And, in the name of all that’s marvellous, what could have put so monstrous an idea into their heads?” demanded the Squire, getting up to face the kitchen.

“Well, I have always fancied that business at Sandstone Torr did,” replied Nash, who had no idea of reticence now, but spoke out as freely as you please. “It had come to light, you know, not long before. Stephen Radcliffe had hidden his brother in the old tower, passing him off to the world as dead; and so, I suppose, it was thought that I could be hidden and passed off as dead.”

“But Stephen Radcliffe never got up a mock funeral. His tale was that Frank had died in London. You were bold people. What will Parson Holland say, when he comes to learn that he read the burial-service over a box of rubbish?”

“I don’t know,” was the helpless reiteration of poor Nash. “The trouble and worry of it altogether, the discomforts of my position, the constant, never-ceasing dread of discovery have—have been to me what you cannot realize. But for going out of the house at night and striding about in the fresh, free air, I should have become mad. It was a taste of freedom. Neither could I always confine myself to the walks in the garden; whether I would nor not, my feet would carry me beyond it and into the shaded copse.”

“Frightening people who met you!”

“When I heard footsteps approach I hid myself—though not always quite in time. I was more put out at meeting people than they were at meeting me.”

“I wonder your keepers here ever let you get out!” cried the Squire, musingly.

“They tried hard to keep me in: and generally succeeded. It was only by fits and starts I gained my way. They were afraid, you see, that I should carry out my threat of disclosing myself but for being yielded to now and then.”

But the Squire did not get over the discovery. He strode about the large kitchen, rubbing his face, giving out sundry Bless my hearts! at intervals. The return to life of Charlotte Tinkle had been marvellous enough, but it was nothing to this.

Meanwhile we were on our road to Duffham’s. Leaving Dobbs at his own forge, we rushed on, and found the doctor in his little parlour at supper; pickled eels and bread-and-cheese: the eels in the wide stone jar they were baked in—which was Nomy’s way of serving pickled fish.

“Will you sit down and take some?” asked Duffham, pointing to the jar: out of which he took the pieces with a fork as he wanted them.

“I should like to, but there’s no time for it,” answered Tod, eyeing the jar wistfully.

Pickled eels are a favourite dish in our parts: and you don’t often eat anything as good.

“Look here, Duffham,” he went on: “we want you to go with us and see—see somebody: and to undertake not to tell tales out of school. The Squire has answered for it that you will not.”

“See who?” asked Duffham, going on with his supper.

“A ghost,” said Tod, grimly. “A dead man.”

“What good can I do them?”

“Well, the man has come to life again. Not for long, though, I should say, judging by his looks. You are not to go and tell about it, mind.”

“Tell what?”

“That he is alive, instead of being, as is supposed, under a gravestone in yonder churchyard. I am not sure but that you went to his funeral.”

Tod’s significant tone, half serious, half mocking, attracted Duffham’s curiosity more even than the words. But he still went on with his eels.

“Who is it?”

“Nash Caromel. There. Don’t fall off in a faint. Caromel has come to life.”

Down went Duffham’s fork. “Why—what on earth do you mean?”

“It is not a joke,” said Tod. “Nash Caromel has been alive all this time, concealed in his house—just as Francis Radcliffe was concealed in the tower. The Squire is with him now—and he is very ill.”

Duffham appealed to me. “Is this true, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Yes, sir, it is. We found him out to-night. He looks as if he were dying. Dobbs is sure he is. You never saw anything so like a ghost.”

Leaving his eels now, calling out to old Nomy that she might take away the supper, Duffham came off with us at once. Dobbs ran up as we passed his forge, and went with us to the turning, talking eagerly.

“If you can cure him, Mr. Duffham, sir, I should take it as a great favour, like, showed to myself,” spoke the blacksmith. “I’d not have pounced upon him for all the world, to give him pain, in the state he’s in. He looks as if he were dying.”

They were in the kitchen still, when Grizzel opened the door to us, the fire bigger and hotter than ever. The first thing Duffham did was to order Caromel to bed, and to have a good fire lighted in his room.

But there was no hope for Nash Caromel. The Squire told us so going home that night. Duffham thought about ten days more would see the end of him.

II.

“And how have things gone during my short absence, Grizzel?” demanded Miss Gwinny Nave, alighting from the tax-cart the following morning, upon her return to Caromel’s Farm.

“Oh, pretty well,” answered Grizzel, who in her heart detested Miss Gwinny and all the Naves. “The master seems weaker. He have took to his bed, and got a fire in his room.”

“When did he do that?”

“He came down last night after you went, Miss Gwinny, and sat over this here kitchen fire for ever so long. Then he went up to bed, and I lighted him a fire and took him up some hot arrowroot with a wine glass o’ brandy in it. Shivering with cold, he was.”

“And he has not got up this morning?”

“No; and he says he does not mean to get up. ‘I’ve taken to my bed for good, Grizzel,’ he says to me this morning when I went in to light the fire again and see what he’d eat for breakfast. And I think he has, Miss Gwinny.”

Which information considerably lightened the doubt which was tormenting Miss Nave’s mind. She wanted, oh how badly, and was wanted, to remain at the Rill, being sorely needed there; but she had not seen her way clear to do it. If Nash was indeed confined to his bed, she might perhaps venture to leave him for a day or two to Grizzel.

But, please don’t think old Grizzel mean for keeping in what had taken place: she was only obeying orders. Duffham and the Squire had laid their heads together and then talked to Caromel; and it was agreed that for the present nothing should be disclosed. They gave their orders to Grizzel, and her master confirmed them.

“And what news have you brought from the Rill, ma’am?” questioned Grizzel, who was making a custard pudding at the kitchen table. “I hope you found things better than you feared.”

“They could not well be worse,” sighed Miss Gwinny, untying her bonnet. She had not the beauty of Charlotte. Her light complexion was like brick-dust, and her hair was straw-coloured. Not but that she was proud of her hair, wearing it in twists, with one ringlet trailing over the left shoulder. “Your mistress lies unconscious still; it is feared the brain is injured; and papa’s leg is broken in two places.”

“Alack a-day?” cried Grizzel, lifting her hands in consternation. “Oh, but I am sorry to hear it, Miss Gwendolen! And the pretty little boy?”

Miss Gwendolen shook her head. “The croup came on again last night worse than ever,” she said, with a rising sob. “They don’t know whether they will save him.”

Grizzel brushed away some tears as she began to beat up her eggs. She was a tender-hearted old thing, and loved little Dun. Miss Nave put aside her bonnet and shawl, and turned to the staircase to pay a visit to Nash. But she looked back to ask a question.

“Then, I am to understand that you had no trouble with the master last night, Grizzel? He did not want to force himself out?”

“The time for that has gone by, ma’am, I think,” answered Grizzel, evasively; not daring and not wishing to confess that he had forced himself out, and what the consequences were. “He seems a deal weaker to-day, Miss Gwinny, than I’ve ever seen him.”

And when Miss Gwinny got into Nash’s room she found the words true. Weak, inert, fading, there lay poor Nash. With the discovery, all struggle had ceased; and it is well known that to resign one’s self to weakness quietly, makes weakness ten times more apparent. One thing struck her greatly: the hollow sound in the voice. Had it come on suddenly? If not, how was it she had never noticed it before? It struck her with a sort of unpleasant chill: for she believed that peculiar hollowness is generally the precursor of death.

“You are feeling worse, Nash, Grizzel says,” she observed; and she thought she had never seen him looking half so ill.

“Oh, I am all right, Gwendolen,” answered he. “What of Charlotte and the child?”

Sitting down on the edge of the large bed, Gwendolen told him all there was to tell. Her papa would get well in time, though he could not be moved yet awhile; but Charlotte and the child were lying in extreme danger.

“Dear me! dear me!” he said, and began to cry, as Grizzel had begun. When a man is reduced, as Nash was, faint in mind and in body, the tears are apt to lie near the eyes.

“And there’s nobody to attend upon them but Mrs. Smith and her maids—two of the stupidest country wenches you ever saw,” said Gwendolen. “I did not know how to come away this morning. The child is more than one person’s work.”

“Why did you come?”

“Because I could not trust you; you know that, Nash. You want to be up to your tricks too often.”

“My tricks!”

“Yes. Going out of doors at night. I’m sure it is a dreadful responsibility that’s thrown upon me. And all for your own sake!”

“You need no longer fear that—if you call my going out the responsibility. I shall never get out of this bed again, Gwinny.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Look at me,” answered Nash. “See if you think it likely. I do not.”

She shook her head doubtingly. He certainly did look too ill to stir—but she remembered the trouble there had been with him; the fierce, wild yearning for exit, that could not be controlled.

“Are you not satisfied? Listen, then: I give you my solemn word of honour not to go out of doors; not to attempt to do so. You must go back to Charlotte and the boy.”

“I’ll see later,” decided Gwinny. “I shall stay here till the afternoon, at any rate.”

And when the afternoon came she took her departure for the Rill. Convinced by Nash’s state that he could not quit his bed, and satisfied at length by his own solemn and repeated assurances that he would not, Gwinny Nave consigned him to the care of Grizzel, and quitted Caromel’s Farm.

Which left the field open again, you perceive. And the Squire and Duffham were there that evening as they had been the previous one.

It was a curious time—the few days that ensued. Gwendolen Nave came over for an hour or two every other day, but otherwise Caromel’s Farm was a free house. Her doubts and fears were gone, for Nash grew worse very rapidly; and, though he sat up in his room sometimes, he could hardly have got downstairs though the house were burning—as Grizzel put it. And he seemed so calm, so tranquil, so entirely passive under his affliction, so resigned to his enfeebled state, so averse to making exertion of any kind, that Miss Gwinny could not have felt much easier had he been in the burial-ground where Church Dykely supposed him to be.

What with his past incarceration, which had endured twelve months, and what with the approach of death, which he had seen looming for pretty nearly half that time, Nash Caromel’s conscience had come back to him. It was pricking him in more corners than one. As his love for Charlotte Nave weakened—and it had been going down a long time, for he saw what the Naves were now, and what they had done for him—his love for Charlotte Tinkle came back, and he began to wish he could set wrongs to rights. That never could be done; he had put it out of his power; but he meant to make some little reparation, opportunity being allowed him.

“I want to make a will, Todhetley,” he said one evening to the Squire, as he sat by the fire, dressed, a huge carriage-rug thrown on his knees for warmth. “I wonder if my lawyer could be induced to come to me?”

“Do you mean Nave?” retorted the Squire, who could not for the life of him help having a fling at Caromel once in a way. “He has been your lawyer of late years.”

“You know I don’t mean Nave; and if I did mean him he could not come,” said poor Nash. “I mean our family lawyer, Crow. Since I discarded him for Nave he has turned the cold shoulder upon me. When I’ve met him in the street at Evesham, he has either passed me with a curt nod or looked another way. I would rather have Crow than anybody, for he’d be true, I know, if he could be induced to come.”

“I’ll see about it,” said the Squire.

“And you’ll be executor, won’t you, Todhetley? you and Duffham.”

“No,” said the Squire. “And what sort of a will are you going to make?”

“I should like to be just,” sighed Nash. “As just as I know how. As just as I can be under the unfortunate circumstances I am placed in.”

“That you have placed yourself in, Caromel.”

“True. I think of it night and day. But she ought to be provided for. And there’s the boy!”

“Who ought to be?”

“My second wife.”

“I don’t say to the contrary. But there is somebody else, who has a greater and prior claim upon you.”

“I know. My heart would be good to leave her all. But that would hardly be just. Poor Charlotte, how patient she has been!”

“Ah, you threw off a good woman when you threw her off. And when you made that other infamous will, leaving her name out of it——”

“It was Nave made it,” interrupted Nash, as hotly as his wasted condition allowed him to speak. “He got another lawyer to draw it up, for look’s sake—but he virtually made it. And, Todhetley, I must—I must get another one made,” he added, getting more and more excited; “and there’s no time to be lost. If I die to-night that will would have to stand.”

With the morning light the Squire went off to Evesham, driving Bob and Blister, and saw the lawyer, Crow—an old gentleman with a bald head. The two shut themselves up in a private room, and it seemed as if they never meant to come out again.

First of all, old Crow had to recover his astonishment at hearing Nash Caromel was living, and that took him some time; next, he had to get over his disinclination and refusal—to act again for Nash, and that took him longer.

“Mind,” said he at last, “if I do consent to act—to see the man and make his will—it will be done out of the respect I bore his father and his brother, and because I don’t like to stand in the way of an act of justice. Mrs. Nash Caromel was here yesterday——”

“Mrs. Nash Caromel!” interrupted the Squire, in a puzzle, for his thoughts had run over to Charlotte Nave. Which must have been very foolish, seeing she was in bed with a damaged head.

“I speak of his wife,” said the old gentleman, loftily. “I have never called any other woman Mrs. Nash Caromel. Her uncle, Tinkle, of Inkberrow, called about the transfer of some of his funded property, and she was with him. I respect that young woman, Squire Todhetley.”

“Ay, to be sure. So do I. Well, now, you will let me drive you back this afternoon, and you’ll take dinner with me, and we’ll go to Caromel’s Farm afterwards. We never venture there before night; that Miss Gwinny Nave makes her appearance sometimes in the daytime.”

“It must be late in the afternoon then,” said the lawyer, rather crossly—for he did not enter into the business with a good grace yet.

“All the same to me,” acquiesced the pater, pleased at having got his consent on any terms.

And when the Squire drove in that evening just at the dinner-hour and brought Lawyer Crow with him, we wondered what was agate. Old Jacobson, who had called in, and been invited to stay by the mater, was as curious as anything over it, and asked the Squire aside, what he was up to, that he must employ Crow instead of his own man.

The will Nash Caromel wished to make was accomplished, signed and sealed, himself and this said Evesham lawyer being alone privy to its contents. Dobbs the blacksmith was fetched in, and he and Grizzel witnessed it.

And, as if Nash Caromel had only lived to make the will, he went galloping on to death at railroad speed directly it was done. A change took place in him the same night. His bell rang for Grizzel, and the old woman thought him dying.

But he rallied a bit the next day: and when the Squire got there in the evening, he was sitting up by the fire dressed. And terribly uneasy.

“I want to see her,” he began, before the Squire had time to say, How are you, or How are you not. “I can’t die in peace unless I see her. And it will not be long first now. I am a bit better, but I thought I was dying in the night: has Grizzel told you?”

The Squire nodded in silence. He was struck with the change in Nash.

“Who is it you want to see? Charlotte Tinkle?”

“Ay, you’ve guessed it. ’Twasn’t hard to guess, was it? I want to see her, Todhetley. I know she’d come.”

Little doubt of that. Had Nash wanted her to visit him in the midst of a fiery furnace, she’d have rushed into it headlong.

But there were difficulties in the way. Charlotte Tinkle was not one of your strong-minded women who are born without nerves; and to tell her that Nash Caromel was living, and not dead, might send her into hysterics for a week. Besides that, Harry Tinkle was Nash Caromel’s bitter enemy: if he learnt the truth he might be for handing him over, dying or living, to old Jones the constable.

“I don’t see how she is to be got here, and that’s the truth, Caromel,” spoke the Squire, awaking from his reverie. “It’s not a thing I should like to undertake. Here comes Duffham.”

“I know what you are thinking of—Harry Tinkle,” returned Nash, as Duffham felt his pulse. “When I was supposed to have died, balking him of his revenge, he grew mad with rage. For a month afterwards he abused me to everybody in the most atrocious terms: in public rooms, in——”

“Who told you that?” interrupted the Squire. “Nave?”

“Nave. I saw no one else to tell me.” Duffham laughed.

“Then it was just as false as Nave is. You might have known Harry Tinkle better.”

Nash looked up. “False!—was it?”

“Why, of course it was,” repeated the Squire. “I say you might have known Harry Tinkle better.”

Nash sighed. “Well, I suppose you think he might give me trouble now. But he would hardly care to apprehend a dying man.”

“We’ll see about it,” they said. Duffham undertook this expedition—if you can call it one. He found it easier than he anticipated. That same evening, upon quitting Caromel’s Farm, Duffham went mooning along, deep in thought, as to how he should make the disclosure to Charlotte, when he overtook her near his home. Her crape veil was thrown back; her face looked pale and quiet in the starlight.

“You are abroad late,” said Duffham.

“I went to see old Miss Pinner this afternoon, and stayed tea with her,” answered Charlotte. “And now I am going to run home.”

“Would you mind coming in for a few minutes, Mrs. Caromel?” he asked, as they reached his door. “I have something to say to you.”

“Can you say it another time? It is nine o’clock, and my mother will be wondering.”

“No; another time may not do,” said Duffham. “Come in. I won’t detain you long.”

And being just one of those yielding people that never assert a will of their own, in she went.

Shut up in Duffham’s surgery, which was more remote from Nomy’s ears than the parlour, Duffham disclosed to her by degrees the truth. Whether he had to get out his sal-volatile over it, or to recover her from fits, we did not hear. One thing was certain: that when Mrs. Nash Caromel recommenced her walk homewards, she was too bewildered to know whether she went on her feet or her head. By that time on the following evening she would have seen her husband.

At least, such was the programme Duffham carved out. But to that bargain, as he found the next day, there might be two words.

Eleven was striking in the morning by the kitchen clock at Caromel’s Farm, when Grizzel saw Miss Gwinny driving in. The damaged gig had been mended, and she now drove backwards and forwards herself.

“How’s the master?” asked she, when she entered the kitchen.

“Very ill,” answered Grizzel. “He won’t be with us long, now, ma’am.”

And when Miss Gwinny saw Nash, and saw how greatly he was altered in the last two days, she thought as Grizzel did—that death was close at hand. Under these circumstances, she sat down to reflect on what she ought to do: whether to remain herself in the house, or whether to go back to the Rill and report to her father and sister. For the latter had come out of her insensibility; the doctors said there was no permanent injury, and she could soon be removed home if she wished to be.

“What do you think, Grizzel?” she inquired, condescending to ask counsel. “It does not seem right to leave him—and you won’t like to be left alone, either, at the last. And I don’t see that any end will be gained by my hastening back to tell them. They’ll know it soon enough: and they cannot come to him.”

“As you please, Miss Gwinny,” replied Grizzel, trembling lest she should remain and complicate matters, but not daring to urge her departure; Gwinny Nave being given, as a great many more ladies are, to act by the rules of contrary in the matter of advice. “It seems hardly right, though, not to let the mistress know he is dying. And I am glad the child’s well: dear little thing!”

Gwinny Nave sat pulling at her one straw ringlet, her brow knitted in abstraction. Various reflections, suggesting certain unpleasant facts, passed rapidly through her mind. That Nash would not be here many days longer, perhaps not many hours, was a grave fact: and then, what of the after-necessities that would arise? A sham funeral had gone out of that house not very long ago: but how was the real funeral to go out, and who was to make the arrangements for it? The truth of Nash Caromel’s being alive, and of the trick which had been played, would have to be disclosed then. And Mr. Nave was incapacitated; he could do nothing, and her sister could do as little; and it seemed to be all falling upon herself, Gwinny; and who was to know but she might be punished for letting Nash lie and die without calling in a doctor to him?

With every fresh moment of thought, some darker complication presented itself. Miss Gwinny began to see that she had better get away, and leave old Grizzel to it. The case must be laid before her father. He might invent some scheme to avoid exposure: for though Lawyer Nave was deprived for the present of action, his mind was not less keen and fertile than usual.

“I think, Grizzel, that the mistress ought to be told how ill he is,” said she, at length. “I shall go back to the Rill. Do all you can for the master: I dare say he will rally.”

“That he never will,” spoke Grizzel, on impulse.

“Now don’t you be obstinate,” returned Miss Gwinny.

Gwendolen Nave drove back to the Rill. Leaving, as she thought, all responsibility upon old Grizzel. And, that evening, the coast being clear again, Charlotte Tinkle, piloted by Duffham, came to Caromel’s Farm and had an interview with her once recreant husband. It lasted longer than Duffham had bargained for; every five minutes he felt inclined to go and knock at the door. Her sobs and his dying voice, which seemed to be sobbing too, might be heard by all who chose to listen. At last Duffham went in and said that it must end: the emotion was bad for Nash. She was kneeling before the sofa on which he lay, her tears dropping.

“Good-bye, good-bye, Charlotte,” he whispered. “I have never cared for any one as I cared for you. Believe that. God bless you, my dear—and forgive me!”

And the next to go in was Harry Tinkle—to clasp Caromel’s hand, and to say how little he had needed to fear him. And the next was the Reverend Mr. Holland; Nash had asked for the parson to be sent for.

Grizzel had a surprise the next day. She had just taken some beef-tea up to the master, which Duffham had called out for—for the end was now so near that the doctor had not chosen to defer his visit till dark—when a closed fly drove up, out of which stepped Miss Gwinny and her sister. Old Grizzel dropped the waiter, thinking it must be her mistress’s ghost.

But it was Charlotte herself. Upon hearing Gwinny’s report she had insisted upon coming home—and Nave supported her views. That stupid old Grizzel, left to her own devices, might be for getting frightened and call in half the parish. The doctor in attendance at the Rill had said Mrs. Caromel might go home if she had any urgent reason for wishing it—and here she was. And really she seemed tolerably well again; quite herself.

Passing Grizzel with a nod, she went straight upstairs, opened Nash’s door, and then—drew back with a scream. For there she saw two strangers. Mr. Duffham was leaning over the bed, trying to feed Nash with spoonfuls of beef-tea; Parson Holland (who had stayed with Nash all night) sat by the fire. Poor Nash himself lay without motion: the hours were very limited now.

Well, there ensued a commotion. Charlotte Nave went down to blow up Grizzel; and she did it well, in spite of her recent illness. Grizzel answered that she was not to blame; it was not she who had betrayed him: Dobbs the blacksmith and Squire Todhetley had found him out, and the Squire had called in Duffham. Charlotte the Second had to make the best of a bad case; but she did not suspect half the treachery that had been at work.

There is no space to enlarge upon the day. Nash died that night; without having been able to speak a word to Charlotte the Second; he was past that when she came; though he shook hands with her.

And the other funeral, which Miss Nave had foreseen a difficulty over, took place without any difficulty. Unless it might be said that the crowd made one. Nash Caromel dead a second time! Church Dykely had never been astounded like this.

But the one dire act of treachery had to come out yet. Nash Caromel had made a fresh will. Crow the lawyer brought it in his pocket when he came from Evesham to attend the funeral, and he read it aloud afterwards. Mrs. Nash the Second sat biting her lips as she listened.

Caromel’s Farm and everything upon it, every stick and stone possessed by Nash, was directed to be sold without delay. Of the money this should realize, the one half was devised to “my dear wife Charlotte, formerly Charlotte Tinkle;” the other half was to be invested by trustees and settled upon “my child, Duncan Nave.” His mother, Charlotte Nave, was to receive a stated portion of the interest for life, or until she should marry again; and that was all the will said about Charlotte the Second.

There’s not much more to tell. As soon as might be, the changes were carried out. Before Lawyer Nave’s leg was fit to go again, Caromel’s Farm had been purchased by the Squire, and Harry Tinkle had taken it from him on a long lease. Just after Harry got into it with his little girl, Mrs. Tinkle died; and Charlotte, well off now, came to live in it with him. The other Charlotte proclaimed herself to be in bad health, and went off to stay at the sea-side. And Nave, when he came out again to rejoice the eyes of Church Dykely (walking lame), was fit to swallow us up with rage. He considered ladies’ parasols an infamous institution, and wished they were all sunk in the sea; especially that particular blue one of Charlotte’s which had led to the accident that unlucky afternoon.

It seemed strange that, after all the chances and changes, it should be a Mrs. Nash Caromel (she was always given her true name now) to inhabit Caromel’s Farm. She, forgiving and loving, made friends with little Dun for poor Nash’s sake, inviting him often to spend the day with her, and picking him choice fruit off the trees.