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 disposal. You will find them suspended over the mantelpiece of my study in cloth cases."

"Loaded?"

"Yes, but not on the cock. Cock them before you go to bed. It is paying you a great compliment, captain, to lend you these: were yon one of the awkward squad you should not have them."

"I will take care. You need delay no longer, Mr. Helstone; you may go now. He is gracious to me to lend me his pistols," she remarked, as the Rector passed out at the garden-gate, "But come, Lina," she continued; "let us go in and have some supper: I was too much vexed at tea with the vicinage of Mr. Sam Wynne to be able to eat, and now I am really hungry."

Entering the house, they repaired to the darkened dining-room, through the open windows of which apartment stole the evening air, bearing the perfume of flowers from the garden, the very distant sound of far-retreating steps from the road, and a soft, vague murmur, whose origin Caroline explained by the remark, uttered as she stood listening at the casement:

"Shirley, I hear the beck in the Hollow."

Then she rung the bell, asked for a candle and some bread and milk—Miss Keeldar's usual supper and her own. Fanny, when she brought in the tray, would have closed the windows and the shutters, but was requested to desist for the present: the twilight was too calm, its breath too balmy to