Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/166

 158 share it; nor will we trust to such a broken reed. Be still, I say, and listen. I will not sink myself again into the blacksmith and the drudge. There lies nothing between me and safety but your meddling tongue, and that must be silenced."

"You cannot!-you dare not !" shrieked the struggling girl,

He laughed grimly.

"I can, and I dare! Look at me! do I look like a man to be frightened out of my purpose by a weak, silly girl, already believed insane! Swear to keep what you know a secret, and I have done with you; but unless you take the oath I shall proposeyou have heard the consequence."

Annie was no heroine; of her brother she had always stood in awe; and now, as his brawuy hands held her with a vice-like te- nacity, her utter helplessness appalled her. He saw the advantage.

"Will you swear ?"

"Never!" "cried Annie. "Father, father! save me! Can you sit by and see me so cruelly used ?"

But Ralph was deaf to the appeal.

"You will not swear?" said John deliberately. "Father, come here."

He rose in obedience to the imperative call.

"Our lives are not safe with a mad woman in the house. Call up one of the shepherds, and bid him go to the town for a fly."

Ralph hesitated, and wrung his hands.

"Mun it come to this, my maid? Ye'll remember, both on yo, that it's been no fault o' mine. I'm an old man—a very old man—nigh upon seventy-five, an' I um die in my bed."

"Are you going " asked his son, sternly. He moved towards the door.

"No, no!" shrieked the overwrought girl, exaggerating in her alarm the real perils of her position. "Come back—come back! Oh, father! John! have mercy upon me!"

"Swear!" said John, relentlessly; and still held by his cruel hands, menaced with his ruthless eyes, and overcome with fatigue and misery, Annie at last repeated the fearful oath.

The reaction came instantly. Flinging off the relaxing grasp of her captor, and bitterly reproaching herself for the momentary cowardice, she cursed them wildly, and again strove to fly; but only, ere she reached the outer porch, to fall in a swoon, so deep that even John began to fear for the consequences; and it was with unusual tenderness that he raised her and carried her back to the bed, which it was many weeks ere she was again able to quit.

June afternoon, in one of the poorer suburbs of the metropolis, where rows of six and eight-roomed houses, all bearing a wonderful similarity in their staring red-brick nakedness, cover acres and acres of what were once well-cultivated gardens—and up and down the strangely named Pleasant Retreats, Prospect Places, and Bellevue Cottages, a couple were wandering and scrutinising those dwellings—and they were many where cards in the windows proclaimed that the tenants had "Apartments to Let."

It was no easy task, however, to find such a domicile as they required. At some places the rent demanded was too high, at others the slatternly appearance of the landlady, or the miserable want of accommodation, compelled them to turn away. At last both simultaneously paused.

"Well, Arthur, where next?"

He looked hopelessly round.

"We must give it up, Grace, for to-day, at least,"

She shook her head.

"And stay another night at that extravagant hotel? No, my brother, we must not give it up yet. Have we tried this street? or that turning? See, the houses there are respectable. Come, courage, mon frère!"

He followed reluctantly.

"Poor Ethelind will be wearied to death with the children."

Grace hesitated: but the thought of another day's search was so disheartening, that she said, with a coaxing smile:

"Give me one more half-hour, and then we will turn our steps homeward."

To this he assented, and, quickening their pace, they again vainly traversed several streets, till their attention was attracted by the efforts of an old man to affix a limp paper to the middle pane of a parlour window with some sticky wafers.

The house looked unusually clean and neat for a London tenement. The ledges of the casements were filled with flowers—not rare, but choice of their kind, and carefully tended —and the morsel of garden was gay with blossoms.

"Let us try here," whispered Grace, and Arthur stopped forward and raised the knocker. The wheezy cough of an asthmátic, and the shuffling step of old age, were instantly heard in the tiny hall. But with all their reverence for the hoary head, neither the brother nor sister could resist a sensation of repugnance as they met the eager, avaricious glances which disparagingly scanned their well-worn habiliments, and rudely scrutinised their faces.