Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Third Series», sayfa 25

“What is it?” cried Dolly.

“I think I saw thy brother Tom last night.”

The words gave Dolly a curious shock. She fell back in a chair.

“I will relate it to thee,” said Elizabeth. “Last evening I was at Aunt Rachel’s window above-stairs, when I saw a boy in dark clothes standing on the pavement outside, just opposite thy gate. It was a bright night, as thee knows. He had his arms folded and stood quite still, gazing at this house. The moonlight shone on his face and I thought how much it was like poor lost Tom’s. He still stood on; so I went downstairs and stepped to our gate, to ask whether he was in want of any one: and then, Dolly, I felt queerer than I ever felt in my life, for I saw that it was Tom. At least, I thought so.”

“Did he speak?” gasped Dolly.

“He neither spoke nor answered me: he turned off, and went quickly down the road. I think it was Tom; I do indeed.”

“What am I to do?” cried Dolly. “Oh, if I could but find him!”

“There’s nothing to do, that we can see,” answered the young Quakeress. “I have talked it over with Aunt Rachel. It would appear as though he did not care to show himself: else, if it were truly thy brother, why did he not come in? I will look out for him every night and speak to him if he appears again. I promise thee that, Dolly.”

“Why do you say ‘appears,’ Elizabeth?” cried the girl. “You think it was himself, do you not; not his—his spirit?”

“Truly, I can but conclude it was himself.”

Dolly, in a state of bewilderment, what with one thing and another, was married to Alick Mapping in St. Martin’s Church, by its white-haired Rector, Digby Smith. A yellow post-chaise waited at the church-gates and carried them to Tewkesbury. The following day they went on by coach to Gloucester, where Mr. Mapping intended to stay a few days before proceeding to London.

They took up their quarters at a comfortable country inn on the outskirts of the town. On the second day after their arrival, Dolly, about to take a country walk with her husband, ran downstairs from putting her bonnet on, and could not see him. The barmaid told her he had gone into the town to post a letter, and asked Dolly to step into the bar-parlour to wait.

It was a room chiefly used by commercial travellers. Dolly’s attention was caught by something over the mantelpiece. In a small glass-case, locked, there was the portrait of a man cleverly done in pencil; by its side hung a plain silver watch with a seal and key attached to a short black ribbon: and over all was a visiting-card, inscribed in ink, “Mr. Gardner.” Dolly looked at this and turned sick and faint: it was her father’s likeness, her father’s watch, seal, and ribbon. Of an excitable nature, she burst into tears, and the barmaid ran in. There and then, the mystery so long hanging about Robert Grape’s fate was cleared up, so far as it ever would be in this world.

He had left Bridgenorth, as may be remembered, on the Thursday morning. Towards the evening of the following day, Friday, as Dolly now heard, he appeared at this very inn. This same barmaid, an obliging, neat, and modest young woman, presenting a rare contrast to the barmaids of the present day, saw him come in. His face had a peculiar, grey shade upon it, which attracted her notice, and she asked him if he felt ill. He answered that he felt pretty well then, but supposed he must have had a fainting-fit when walking into the town, for to his surprise he found himself on the grass by the roadside, waking up from a sort of stupor. He engaged a bedroom for the night, and she thought he said—but she had never been quite sure—that he had come to look out for a horse at the fair to be held in Gloucester the next day. He took no supper, “not feeling up to it,” he said, but drank a glass of weak brandy-and-water, and ate a biscuit with it, before going up to bed. The next morning he was found dead; had apparently died quietly in his sleep. An inquest was held, and the medical men testified that he had died of heart disease. Poor Dolly, listening to this, wondered whether the pitch out of the gig at Bridgenorth had fatally injured him.

“We supposed him to be a Mr. Gardner,” continued the barmaid, “as that card”—pointing to it—“was found in his pocket-book. But we had no clue as to who he was or whence he came. His stockings were marked with a ‘G’ in red cotton; and there was a little loose money in his pocket and a bank-note in his pocket-book, just enough to pay the expenses of the funeral.”

“But that likeness,” said Dolly. “How did you come by it? Who took it?”

“Ah, ma’am, it was a curious thing, that—but such things do not happen by chance. An idle young man of the town used to frequent our inn; he was clever at drawing, and would take off a likeness of any one near him with a few strokes of a pen or pencil in a minute or two, quite surreptitious like and for his own amusement. Wonderful likenesses they were. He was in the bar-parlour, this very room, ma’am, while the stranger was drinking his brandy-and-water, and he dashed off this likeness.”

“It is exactly like,” said poor Dolly. “But his name was Grape, not Gardner. It must have been the card of some acquaintance.”

“When nobody came forward to identify the stranger, the landlord got the sketch given up to him,” continued the young woman. “He put it in this case with the watch and seal and card, and hung it where you see, hoping that sometime or other it might be recognized.”

“But did you not let it be known abroad that he had died?” sighed Dolly.

“Why, of course we did; and put an advertisement in the Gloucester papers to ask if any Mr. Gardner was missing from his friends. Perhaps the name, not being his, served to mislead people. That’s how it was, ma’am.”

So that the one disappearance, that of Robert Grape, was now set at rest.

THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.
IN AFTER YEARS

I

We found her out through Mr. Brandon’s nephew, Roger Bevere, a medical student, who gave his people trouble, and one day got his arm and head broken. Mr. Brandon and the Squire were staying in London at the Tavistock Hotel. I, Johnny Ludlow, was also in London, visiting Miss Deveen. News of the accident was brought to Mr. Brandon; the young man had been carried into No. 60, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington, and a doctor named Pitt was attending him.

We went to see him at once. A narrow, quiet street, as I recollected well, this Gibraltar Terrace, the dwellings it contained facing each other, thirty in a row. No. 60 proved to be the same house to which we had gone once before, when inquiring about the illness of Francis Radcliffe, and Pitt was the same doctor. It was the same landlady also; I knew her as soon as she opened the door; a slender, faded woman, long past middle life, with a pink flush on her thin cheeks, and something of the lady about her.

“What an odd thing, Johnny!” whispered the Squire, recognizing the landlady as well as the house. “Mapping, I remember her name was.”

Mr. Brandon went upstairs to his nephew. We were shown by her into the small parlour, which looked as faded as it had looked on our last visit, years before: as faded as she was. While relating to us how young Bevere’s accident occurred, she had to run away at a call from upstairs.

“Looks uncommonly careworn, doesn’t she, Johnny!” remarked the Squire. “Seems a nice sort of person, though.”

“Yes, sir. I like her. Does it strike you that her voice has a home-ring in it? I think she must be from Worcestershire.”

“A home-ring—Worcestershire!” retorted he. “It wouldn’t be you, Johnny, if you did not get up some fancy or other. Here she comes! You are not from Worcestershire, are you, ma’am?” cried the Squire, going to the root of the question at once, in his haste to convict my fancy of its sins.

“Yes, I am, sir,” she replied; and I saw the pink flush on her cheeks deepen to crimson. “I knew you, sir, when I was a young girl, many years ago. Though I should not have recognized you when you were last here, but that you left your card. We lived at Islip, sir; at that pretty cottage with the yellow roses round the porch. You must remember Dolly Grape.”

“But you are not Dolly Grape!” returned the Squire, pushing up his spectacles.

“Yes, sir, I was Dolly Grape. Your mother knew us well; so did you.”

“Goodness bless my heart!” softly cried the Squire, gazing at her as if the news were too much for him. And then, starting up impulsively, he grasped her hand and gave it a hearty shake. A sob seemed to take her throat. The Squire sat back again, and went on staring at her.

“My father disappeared mysteriously on one of his journeys; you may remember us by that, sir.”

“To be sure I remember it—Robert Grape!” assented the Squire. “Had to do with the post-horse duty. Got as far as Bridgenorth, and was never heard of again. And it is really you—Dolly Grape! And you are living here—letting lodgings! I’m afraid the world has not been overkind to you.”

She shook her head; tears were running down her faded cheeks.

“No, it has not, sir,” she answered, as she wiped them away with her handkerchief. “I have had nothing but ups and downs in life since leaving Worcester: sad misfortunes: sometimes, I think, more than my share. Perhaps you heard that I married, sir—one Mr. Mapping?”

The Squire nodded slightly. He was too busy gazing at her to pay attention to much else.

“I am looking at you to see if I can trace the old features of the old days,” he said, “and I do now; they grow upon my memory; though you were but a slip of a girl when I used to see you. I wonder I did not recognize you at first.”

“And I wonder that you can even recognize me now, sir,” she returned: “trouble and grief have so much altered me. I am getting old, too.”

“Have you lived in this house long?”

“Nearly ten years, sir. I live by letting my rooms.”

The Squire’s voice took a tone of compassion.

“It can’t be much of a living, once the rent and taxes are paid.”

Mrs. Mapping’s mild blue eyes, that seemed to the Squire to be of a lighter tinge than of yore, wore a passing sadness. Any one able to read it correctly might have seen she had her struggles.

“Are you a widow?”

“I—call myself one, sir,” she replied, with hesitation.

“Call yourself one!” retorted the Squire, for he liked people to be straightforward in their speech. “My good woman, you are a widow, or you are not one.”

“I pass for one, sir.”

“Now, what on earth do you mean?” demanded he. “Is your husband—Mapping—not dead?”

“He was not dead when I last heard of him, sir; that’s a long while ago. But he is not my husband.”

“Not your husband!” echoed the Squire, pushing up his spectacles again. “Have you and he quarrelled and parted?”

Any countenance more pitifully sad than Mrs. Mapping’s was at that moment, I never wish to see. She stood smoothing down her black silk apron (which had a slit in it) with trembling fingers.

“My history is a very painful one,” she said at last in a low voice. “I will tell it if you wish; but not this morning. I should like to tell it you, sir. It is some time since I saw a home-face, and I have often pictured to myself some kind friendly face of those old happy days looking at me while I told it. Different days from these.”

“These cannot be much to boast of,” repeated the Squire. “It must be a precarious sort of living.”

“Of course it fluctuates,” she said. “Sometimes my rooms are full, at other times empty. One has to put the one against the other and strive to tide over the hard days. Mr. Pitt is very good to me in recommending the rooms to medical students; he is a good-natured man.”

“Oh, indeed! Listen to that, Johnny! Pitt good-natured! Rather a loose man, though, I fancy, ma’am.”

“What, Mr. Pitt? Sir, I don’t think so. He has a surgery close by, and gets a good bit of practice–”

The rest was interrupted by Mr. Pitt himself; he came to say we might go up to Mr. Brandon in the sick-room. We had reason to think ill enough of Pitt in regard to the Radcliffe business; but the Squire could not tackle him about the past offhand, this not being just the time or place for it. Later, when he did so, it was found that we had been misjudging the man. Pitt had not joined Stephen Radcliffe in any conspiracy; and the false letter, telling of Frank’s death at Dr. Dale’s, had not been written by him. So we saw that it must have been concocted by Stephen himself.

“Any way, if I did write such a letter, I retained no consciousness of it afterwards,” added Pitt, with candour. “I am sorry to say, Mr. Todhetley, that I gave way to drink at that time, and I know I was often not myself. But I do not think it likely that I wrote it; and as to joining Mr. Radcliffe in any conspiracy against his brother, why, I would not do such a thing, drunk or sober, and I never knew it had been done.”

“You have had the sense to pull up,” cried the Squire, in reference to what Pitt had admitted.

“Yes,” answered Pitt, in a voice hardly above a whisper. “And I never think of what I might have become by this time, but for pulling up, but I thank God.”

These allusions, however, may perhaps only puzzle the reader. And it is not with Mr. Pitt, his virtues or his failings, that this paper concerns itself, but with the history of Dorothy Grape.

We must take it up from the time Dorothy arrived in London with her husband, Alick Mapping, after their marriage at Worcester, as already narrated. The sum of three hundred pounds, owned by Dolly, passed into Mr. Mapping’s possession on the wedding-day, for she never suggested such a thing as that it should be settled on herself. The proceeds, arising from the sale of the furniture, were also transmitted to him later by the auctioneer. Thus he had become the proprietor of Dolly, and of all her worldly goods. After that, he and she faded out of Worcestershire memory, and from the sight of Worcestershire people—except for one brief meeting, to be mentioned presently.

The home in London, to which her husband conveyed her, and of which he had boasted, Dolly found to be lodgings. Lodgings recently engaged by him, a sitting-room and bedroom, in the Blackfriars Road. They were over a shop, kept by one Mrs. Turk, who was their landlady. “I would not fix upon a house, dear, without you,” he said; and Dolly thanked him gratefully. All he did was right to her.

She was, as he had told her she would be, happy as a cricket, though bewildered with the noisy bustle of the great town, and hardly daring to venture alone into its busy streets, more crowded than was Worcester Cathedral on the Sundays Mr. Benson preached. The curious elucidation at Gloucester of what her father’s fate had been was a relief to her mind, rather than the contrary, once she had got over its sadness; though the still more curious doubt about her brother Tom, whispered to her by Elizabeth Deavor on her wedding morning, was rarely absent from her thoughts. But Dolly was young, Dolly was in love, and Dolly was intensely happy. Her husband took her to the theatres, to Vauxhall, and to other places of amusement; and Dolly began to think life was going to be a happy valley into which care would never penetrate.

This happy state of things changed. Mr. Mapping took to be a great deal away from home, sometimes for weeks together. He laid the fault upon his business; travellers in the wine trade had to go all over England, he said. Dolly was not unreasonable and accepted the explanation cheerfully.

But something else happened now and then that was less satisfactory. Mr. Mapping would appear at home in a condition that frightened Dolly: as if he had made the mistake of tasting the wine samples himself, instead of carrying them to his customers. Never having been brought into contact with anything of the kind in her own home, she regarded it with terror and dismay.

Then another phase of discomfort set in: money seemed to grow short. Dolly could not get from her husband what was needed for their moderate expenses; which were next to nothing when he was away from home. She cried a little one day when she wanted some badly and he told her he had none to give her. Upon which Mr. Mapping turned cross. There was no need of tears, he said: it would all come right if she did not bother. Dolly, in her secret heart, hoped he would not have to break in upon what he called their “nest-egg,” that three hundred pounds in the bank. A nest-egg which, as he had more than once assured her, it was his intention to keep intact.

Only in one thing had Mr. Mapping been arbitrary: he would not allow her to hold any communication with Worcester. When they first came to London, he forbade Dolly to write to any of her former friends, or to give them her address. “You have no relatives there,” he said, “only a few acquaintances, and I would prefer, Dolly, that you dropped them altogether.” Of course she obeyed him: though it prevented her writing to ask Elizabeth Deavor whether she had again seen Tom.

Things, despite Mr. Mapping’s assurances, did not come right. As the spring advanced, his absences became more marked and the money less plentiful. Dolly shed many tears. She knew not what to do; for, as the old song says, not e’en love can live on flowers. It was a very favourite song of Dolly’s, and her tuneful voice might often be heard trilling it through from beginning to end as she sat at work.

 
“Young Love lived once in a humble shed,
Where roses breathing
And woodbines wreathing
Around the lattice their tendrils spread,
As wild and as sweet as the life he led.
 
 
“The garden flourished, for young Hope nourished,
And Joy stood by to count the hours:
But lips, though blooming, must still be fed,
And not e’en Love can live on flowers.
 
 
“Alas, that Poverty’s evil eye
Should e’er come hither
Such sweets to wither;
The flowers laid down their heads to die,
And Love looked pale as the witch drew nigh.
 
 
“She came one morning, and Love had warning,
For he stood at the window, peeping for day:
‘Oh, oh,’ said he, ‘is it you,—good-bye’—
And he opened the window and flew away.”
 

Dolly’s love did not fly away, though the ugly witch, Poverty, was certainly showing herself. Mrs. Turk grew uneasy. Dolly assured her there was no occasion for that; that if the worst came to the worst, they must break into the “nest-egg” which they had lying by in the Bank of England—the three hundred pounds left her by her mother.

One bright day in May, Dolly, pining for the outdoor sunshine, betook herself to Hyde Park, a penny roll in her pocket for her dinner. The sun glittered in the blue sky, the air was warm, the birds chirped in the trees and hopped on the green grass. Dolly sat on a bench enjoying the sweetness and tranquillity, thinking how very delightful life might be when no evil stepped in to mar it.

Two Quakeress ladies approached arm-in-arm, talking busily. Dolly started up with a cry: for the younger one was Elizabeth Deavor. She had come to London with a friend for the May meetings. The two girls were delighted to see each other, but Elizabeth was pressed for time.

“Why did thee never write to me, Dorothy? I had but one letter from thee, written at Gloucester, telling me, thee knows, all about thy poor father.” And, to this question, Dolly murmured some lame excuse.

“I wanted to write to thee, but I had not thy address. I promised thee I would look out for Tom—”

“And have you seen him again?” interrupted Dolly in excitement. “Oh, Elizabeth?”

“I have seen the boy again, but it was not Tom: and I am very sorry that my fancy misled me and caused me to excite thy hopes. It was only recently, in Fourth month. I saw the same boy standing in the same place before thy old gate, his arms folded, and looking at the house as before, in the moonlight. I ran out, and caught his arm, and held it while he told me who he was and why he came there. It was not thy brother, Dorothy, but the likeness to him is marvellous.”

“No!—not he?” gasped Dolly, woefully disappointed.

“It is one Richard East,” said Elizabeth; “a young sailor. He lived with his mother in that house before she died, when he was a little boy; and when he comes home from a voyage now, and is staying with his friends in Melcheapen Street, he likes to go up there and have a good look at it. This is all. As I say, I am sorry to have misled thee. We think there cannot be a doubt that poor Tom really lost his life that night in the canal. And art thee nicely, Dorothy?—and is thy husband well? Thee art looking thin. Fare thee well.”

Summer passed, Dolly hardly knew how. She was often reduced to straits, often and often went dinnerless. Mrs. Turk only had a portion of what was due to her by fits and starts. Mr. Mapping himself made light of troubles; they did not seem to touch him much; he was always in spirits and always well dressed.

“Alick, you should draw a little of that money in the bank,” his wife ventured to suggest one day when Mrs. Turk had been rather troublesome. “We cannot go on like this.”

“Break in upon our ‘nest-egg!’” he answered. “Not if I know it, Dolly. Mrs. Turk must wait.”

A little circumstance was to happen that gave some puzzle to Dolly. She had been married about fourteen months, and her husband was, as she believed, on his travels in Yorkshire, when Lord-Mayor’s day occurred. Mrs. Gurk, a good woman in the main, and compassionating the loneliness of the young wife, offered to take her to see the show, having been invited to an upper window of a house in Cheapside. Of all the sights in the world that Dolly had heard of, she quite believed that must be the greatest, and felt delighted. They went, took up their station at the window, and the show passed. If it had not quite come up to Dolly’s expectation, she did not say so.

“A grand procession, is it not, Mrs. Mapping?” cried her companion, gazing after it with admiring eyes.

“Very,” said Dolly. “I wonder—Good gracious!” she broke off, with startling emphasis, “there’s my husband!”

“Where?” asked Mrs. Turk, her eyes bent on the surging crowd below.

“There,” said Dolly, pointing with her finger; “there! He is arm-in-arm with two others; in the middle of them. How very strange! It was only yesterday I had a letter from him from Bradford, saying he should be detained there for some time to come. How I wish he had looked up at this window!”

Mrs. Turk’s sight had failed to single him out amongst the moving crowd. And as Mr. Mapping did not make his appearance at home that evening, or for many evenings to come, she concluded that the young wife must have been mistaken.

When Mr. Mapping did appear, he said the same, telling Dolly she must have “seen double,” for that he had not been in London. Dolly did not insist, but she felt staggered and uncomfortable; she felt certain it was her husband she saw.

How long the climax would have been postponed, or in what way it might have disclosed itself, but for something that occurred, cannot be conjectured. This wretched kind of life went on until the next spring. Dolly was reduced to perplexity. She had parted with all the pretty trinkets her mother left her; she would live for days together upon bread-and-butter and tears: and a most unhappy suspicion had instilled itself into her mind—that the nest-egg no longer existed. But even yet she found excuses for her husband; she thought that all doubt might still be explained away. Mrs. Turk was very good, and did not worry; Dolly did some plain sewing for her, and made her a gown or two.

On one of these spring days, when the sun was shining brightly on the pavement outside, Dolly went out on an errand. She had not gone many steps from the door when a lady, very plainly dressed, came up and accosted her quietly.

“Young woman, I wish to ask why you have stolen away my husband?”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed the startled Dolly. “What do you mean?”

“You call yourself Mrs. Mapping.”

“I am Mrs. Mapping.”

The stranger shook her head. “We cannot converse here,” she said. “Allow me to go up to your room”—pointing to it. “I know you lodge there.”

“But what is it that you want with me?” objected Dolly, who did not like all this.

“You think yourself the wife of Alick Mapping. You think you were married to him.”

Dolly wondered whether the speaker had escaped from that neighbouring stronghold, Bedlam. “I don’t know what it is you wish to insinuate,” she said. “I was married to Mr. Mapping at St. Martin’s Church in Worcester, more than eighteen months ago.”

“Ay! But I, his wife, was married to him in London seven years ago. Yours was no marriage; he deceived you.”

Dolly’s face was turning all manner of colours. She felt frightened almost to death.

“Take me to your room and I will tell you all that you need to know. Do not fear I shall reproach you; I am only sorry for you; it has been no fault of yours. He is a finished deceiver, as I have learnt to my cost.”

Dolly led the way. Seated together, face to face, her eyes strained on the stranger’s, she listened to the woeful tale, which was gently told. That it was true she could not doubt. Alick Mapping had married her at St. Martin’s Church in Worcester, but he had married this young woman some years before it.

“You are thinking that I look older than my husband,” said she, misinterpreting Dolly’s gaze. “That is true. I am five years older, and am now approaching my fortieth year. He pretended to fall in love with me; I thought he did; but what he really fell in love with was my money.”

“How did you come to know about me?—how did you find it out?” gasped Dolly.

“It was through Mrs. Turk, your landlady,” answered the true wife. “She has been suspecting that something or other was wrong, and she talked of it to a friend of hers who chances to know my family. This friend was struck with the similarity of name—the Alick Mapping whose wife was here in the Blackfriars Road, and the Alick Mapping whose wife lived at Hackney.”

“How long is it since he left you?” asked poor Dolly.

“He has not left me. He has absented himself inexplicably at times for a year or two past, but he is still with me. He is at home now, at this present moment. I have a good home, you must understand, and a good income, which he cannot touch; he would think twice before giving up that. Had you money?” continued the lady abruptly.

“I had three hundred pounds. He told me he had placed it in the Bank of England; I think he did do that; and that he should never draw upon it, but leave it there for a nest-egg.”

Mrs. Mapping smiled in pity. “You may rely upon it that there’s not a shilling left of it. Money in his hands, when he can get hold of any, runs out of them like water.”

“Is it true that he travels for a wine house?”

“Yes—and no. It is his occupation, but he is continually throwing up his situations: pleasure has more attraction for him than work; and he will be a gentleman at large for months together. Yet not a more clever man of business exists than he is known to be, and he can get a place at any time.”

“Have you any children?” whispered Dolly.

“No. Shall you prosecute him?” continued the first wife, after a pause.

“Shall I—what?” cried Dolly, aghast.

“Prosecute him for the fraud he has committed on you?”

“Oh dear! the exposure would kill me,” shivered the unhappy girl. “I shall only hope to run away and hide myself forever.”

“Every syllable I have told you is truth,” said the stranger, producing a slip of paper as she rose to depart. “Here are two or three references by which you can verify it, if you doubt me. Mrs. Turk will do it for you if you do not care to stir in it yourself. Will you shake hands with me?”

Dolly assented, and burst into a whirlwind of tears.

Nothing seemed to be left for her, as she said, but to run away and hide herself. All the money was gone, and she was left penniless and helpless. By the aid of Mrs. Turk, who proved a good friend to her, she obtained a situation in a small preparatory school near Croydon, as needle-woman and companion to the mistress. She called herself Mrs. Mapping still, and continued to wear her wedding-ring; she did not know what else to do. She had been married; truly, as she had believed; and what had come of it was surely no fault of hers.

A little good fortune fell to her in time; a little bit. For years and years she remained in that school at Croydon, until, as it seemed to herself, she was middle-aged, and then the mistress of it died. Having no relatives, she left her savings and her furniture to Dolly. With the money Dolly set up the house in Gibraltar Terrace, put the furniture into it, and began to let lodgings. A young woman, who had been teacher in the school, and whom Dolly regarded as her sister, and often called her so, removed to it with her and stayed with her until she married.

Those particulars—which we listened to one evening from her own lips—were gloomy enough. The Squire went into an explosion over Alick Mapping.

“The despicable villain! What has become of him?”

“I never saw him after his wife came to me,” she answered, “but Mrs. Turk would get news of him now and then. Since Mrs. Turk’s death, I have heard nothing. Sometimes I think he may be dead.”

“I hope he was hung!” flashed the Squire.

Well—to hasten on. That was Dorothy Grape’s history since she left Worcester; and a cruel one it was!

We saw her once or twice again before quitting London. And the Squire left a substantial present with her, for old remembrance sake.

“She looks as though she needed it, Johnny,” said he. “Poor thing! poor thing! And such a pretty, happy little maiden as she used to be, standing in her pinafore amongst the yellow roses in the porch at Islip! Johnny, lad, I hope that vagabond came to be hanged!”