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 Zbe ffDatfc of Cain.
 
 Copyright. All rights reserved 
 
 THE 
 
 MARK OF CAIN 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "BALLADES IN BLUE CHINA" "CUSTOMS AND MYTH" 
 
 # 
 
 ETC 
 
 f 
 
 Zlrrowsmltb's Bristol Xibrarv 
 
 Vol. XIII 
 
 BRISTOL 
 
 J. W. Arrowsmith, ii Quay Street 
 
 LONDON 
 Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 4 Stationers' Hall Court 
 
 1886
 
 
   .
 
 p Tl 
 ...-4- 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. . PAGE. 
 
 I. A TALE OF TWO CLUBS I 
 
 II. IN THE SNOW 17 
 
 III. AN ACADEMIC POTHOUSE 26 
 
 IV. MISS MARLETT'S 39 
 
 V. FLOWN 54 
 
 VI. AT ST. GATIEN'S 66 
 
 VII. AFTER THE INQUEST 78 
 
 VIII. THE JAFFA ORANGES go 
 
 IX. MRS. ST. JOHN DELORAINE 107 
 
 X. TRAPS Il8 
 
 XI. THE NIGHT OF ADVENTURES 131 
 
 XII. A PATIENT 144 
 
 XIII. ANOTHER PATIENT 154 
 
 XIV. FOUND 163 
 
 XV. THE MARK OF CAIN 174 
 
 XVI. THE VERDICT OF FATE 186 
 
 EPILOGUE 198
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 a Gale of Gwo Clubs. 
 
 " Such arts the gods who dwell on high 
 Have given to the Greek."— Lays of Ancient Rome. 
 
 N the Strangers' Room of the Olympic 
 Club the air was thick with tobacco- 
 smoke, and, despite the bitter cold 
 outside, the temperature was uncom- 
 fortably high. Dinner was over, and 
 the guests, broken up into little groups, were chat- 
 tering noisily. No one had yet given any sign of 
 departing : no one had offered a welcome apology 
 for the need of catching an evening train. 
 
 Perhaps the civilised custom which permits 
 women to dine in the presence of the greedier sex 
 is the proudest conquest of Culture. Were it not 
 for the excuse of "joining the ladies," dinner 
 parties (like the congregations in Heaven, as 
 described in the hymn) would " ne'er break up," 
 and suppers (like Sabbaths, on the same authority) 
 would never end. 
 
 " Hang it all, will the fellows never go ? " 
 So thought Maitland, of St. Gatien's, the 
 founder of the feast. The inhospitable reflec- 
 tions which we have recorded had all been passing 
 through his brain as he rather moodily watched
 
 2 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 the twenty guests he had been feeding, — one can 
 hardly say entertaining. It was a " duty dinner " 
 he had been giving, — almost everything Maitland 
 did was done from a sense of duty, — yet he 
 scarcely appeared to be reaping the reward 
 of an approving conscience. His acquaintances, 
 laughing and gossiping round the half-empty wine- 
 glasses, the olives, the scattered fruit, and " the 
 ashes of the weeds of their delight," gave them- 
 selves no concern about the weary host. Even 
 at his own party, as in life generally, Maitland 
 felt like an outsider. He wakened from his 
 reverie as a strong hand was laid lightly on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Well, Maitland," said a man sitting down 
 beside him, " what have you been doing this long 
 time?" 
 
 "What have I been doing, Barton ?" Maitland 
 answered. " Oh, I have been reflecting on the 
 choice of a life, and trying to humanise myself! 
 Bielby says I have not enough human nature." 
 
 " Bielby is quite right ; he is the most judicious 
 of College dons and father confessors, old man. 
 And how long do you mean to remain his pupil 
 and penitent ? And how is the pothouse getting 
 on?" 
 
 Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school 
 with Maitland, and ever since, at College and in 
 life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him. 
 Barton was a big young man, with great thews 
 and sinews, and a broad breast beneath his broad- 
 cloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde, 
 prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding 
 nose, keen merry blue eyes, and a short fair beard. 
 He had taken a medical as well as other degrees 
 at the University ; he had studied at Vienna 
 and Paris ; he was even what Captain Costigan 
 styles "a scoientific cyarkter." He had written
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 3 
 
 learnedly in various Proceedings of erudite so- 
 cieties ; he had made a cruise in a man-of-war, 
 a scientific expedition ; and his Les Tatouages, 
 Etude Medico-Legale, published in Paris, had been 
 commended by the highest authorities. Yet, 
 from some whim of philanthropy, he had not a 
 home and practice in Cavendish Square, but 
 dwelt and laboured in Chelsea. 
 
 " How is your pothouse getting on ?" he asked 
 again. 
 
 " The pothouse ? Oh, the Hit ov Miss you 
 mean ? Well, I 'm afraid it 's not very successful. 
 I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of 
 doing some good in a practical kind of way. The 
 working men at the waterside won't go to clubs, 
 where there is nothing but coffee to drink, and 
 little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them 
 sound beer, and looked in among them now and 
 then of an evening, I might help to civilise them 
 a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves' Club 
 in the East-end. And then I fancied they might 
 help to make me a little more human. But it does 
 not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born 
 wet blanket. But the idea is good. Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine quite agrees with me about that. And 
 she is a high authority." 
 
 " Mrs. St. John Deloraine ? I 've heard of her. 
 She is a lively widow, isn't she ? " 
 
 " She is a practical philanthropist," answered 
 Maitland, flushing a little. 
 
 " Pretty too, I have been told ? " 
 
 " Yes ; she is ' conveniently handsome,' as Izaak 
 Walton says." 
 
 " I say, Maitland, here's a chance to humanise 
 you. Why don't you ask her to marry you ? 
 Pretty and philanthropic and rich, — what better 
 would you ask ? " 
 
 " I wish everyone wouldn't bother a man to
 
 4 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 marry," Maitland replied testily, and turning red 
 in his peculiar manner ; for his complexion was 
 pale and unwholesome. 
 
 "What a queer chap you are, Maitland : what 's 
 the matter with you ? Here you are, young, 
 entirely without encumbrances, as the advertise- 
 ments say, no relations to worry you, with plenty 
 of money, let alone what you make by writing, 
 and yet you are not happy. What is the matter 
 with you ? " 
 
 " Well, you should know best. What 's the 
 good of your being a doctor, and acquainted all 
 these years with my moral and physical consti- 
 tution (what there is of it), if you can't tell what 's 
 the nature of my complaint ? " 
 
 " I don't diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, 
 down by the side of the water, among the hardy 
 patients of Mundy and Barton, general practi- 
 tioners. There is plenty of human nature there!" 
 "And do you mean to stay there with Mundy 
 much longer ?" 
 
 " Well, I don't know. A fellow is really doing 
 some good, and it is a splendid practice for mas- 
 tering surgery. They are always falling off roofs, 
 or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed 
 between barges, or kicking each other into most 
 interesting jellies. Then the foreign sailors are 
 handy with their knives. Altogether a man learns 
 a good deal about surgery in Chelsea. But, I 
 say," Barton went on, lowering his voice, " where 
 
 on earth did you pick up ?" 
 
 Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, 
 standing at some distance, the centre of half a 
 dozen very yotithful revellers. 
 
 " Cranley, do you mean ? I met him at the 
 Trumpet office. He was writing about the Coolie 
 Labour Question and the Eastern Question. He 
 has been in the South Seas, like you."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 5 
 
 " Yes ; he has been in a lot of queerer places 
 than the South Seas," answered the other, " and 
 he ought to know something about Coolies. He 
 has dealt in them, I fancy." 
 
 " I daresay," Maitland replied rather wearily. 
 " He seems to have travelled a good deal : per- 
 haps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever they 
 may be." 
 
 " Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind 
 of man your guest is, or don't you ? " 
 
 " He seems to be a military and sporting kind 
 of gent, so to speak," said Maitland ; " but what 
 does it matter ?" 
 
 " Then }rou don't know why he left his private 
 tutor's; you don't know why he left the University; 
 you don't know why he left the Ninety-Second ; 
 you don't know,- and no one does, what he did 
 after that ; and you never heard of that affair 
 with th& Frenchman in Egypt ? " 
 
 " Well," Maitland replied, " about his ancient 
 history I own I don't know anything. As to the 
 row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me 
 himself. He said the beggar was too small for 
 him to lick, and that duelling was ridiculous." 
 
 " They didn't take that view of it at Shephard's 
 Hotel." 
 
 "Well, it is not my affair," said Maitland. 
 " One should see all sorts of characters, Bielbysays. 
 This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has been 
 a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adven- 
 ture, and he is full of good stories. I rather like 
 him, and he can't do my moral character any 
 harm. I'm not likely to deal in Coolies, at my 
 time of life, nor quarrel with warlike aliens." 
 
 " No ; but he 's not a good man to introduce to 
 these boys from Oxford," Barton was saying, when 
 the subject of their conversation came up, sur- 
 rounded by his little court of undergraduates.
 
 6 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal 
 older than the company in which he found him- 
 self. Without being one of the hoary youths who 
 play Falstaff to every fresh heir's Prince Harry, 
 he was a middle-aged man, too obviously accus- 
 tomed to the society of boys. His very dress 
 spoke of a prolonged j^outh. A large cat's-eye, 
 circled with diamonds, blazed solitary in his shirt- 
 front, and his coat was cut after the manner of the 
 contemporary reveller. His chin was clean shaven, 
 and his face, though a good deal worn, was ripe, 
 smooth, shining with good cheer, and of a purply 
 bronze hue, from exposure to hot suns and fami- 
 liarity with the beverages of many peoples. His 
 full red lips, with their humorous corners, were 
 shaded by a small black moustache, and his twink- 
 ling bistre -coloured eyes, beneath mobile black 
 eyebrows, gave Cranley the air of a jester and a 
 good fellow. In manner he was familiar, with a 
 kind of deference, too, and reserve, " like a dog 
 that is always wagging his tail and deprecating a 
 kick," thought Barton grimly, as he watched the 
 other's genial advance. 
 
 "He's going to say good -night, bless him," 
 thought Maitland gratefully. " Now the others 
 will be moving too, I hope ! " 
 
 So Maitland rose with much alacrity as Cranley 
 approached him. To stand up would show, he 
 thought, that he was not inhospitably eager to 
 detain the parting guest. 
 
 " Good-night, Mr. Maitland," said the senior, 
 holding out his hand. 
 
 " It is still early," said the host, doing his best 
 to play his part. " Must you really go ? " 
 
 "Yes; the night's young" (it was about half- 
 past twelve), " but I have a kind of engagement 
 to look in at the Cockpit, and three or four of 
 your young friends here are anxious to come with
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 7 
 
 me, and see how we keep it up round there. 
 Perhaps you and your friend will walk with us." 
 Here he bowed slightly in the direction of Barton. 
 
 "There will be a little bac going on," he con- 
 tinued, — "un petit bac de sante ; and these boys tell 
 me they have never played anything more elevat- 
 ing than loo." 
 
 " I 'm afraid I am no good at a round game," 
 answered Maitland, who had played at his Aunt's 
 at Christmas, and who now observed with delight 
 that everyone was moving; "but here is Barton, 
 who will be happy to accompany you, I daresay." 
 
 " If you 're for a frolic, boys," said Barton, 
 quoting Dr. Johnson, and looking rather at the 
 younger men than at Cranley, " why, I will not 
 balk you. Good-night, Maitland." 
 
 And he shook hands with his host. 
 
 " Good-nights " were uttered in every direction; 
 sticks, hats, and umbrellas were hunted up ; and 
 while Maitland, half-asleep, was being whirled to 
 his rooms in Bloomsbury in a hansom, his guests 
 made the frozen pavement of Piccadilly ring 
 beneath their elegant heels. 
 
 " It is only round the corner," said Cranley to 
 the four or five men who accompanied him. 
 "The Cockpit, where I am taking you, is in a 
 fashionable slum off St. James's. We're just 
 there." 
 
 There was nothing either meretricious or sinister 
 in the aspect of that favoured resort, the Cockpit, 
 as the Decade Club was familiarly called by its 
 friends — and enemies. Two young Merton men 
 and the freshman from New, who were enjoying 
 their Christmas vacation in town, and had been 
 dining with Maitland, were a little disappointed 
 in the appearance of the place. They had 
 hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a 
 lane, and to be shown, after investigation through
 
 8 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 a loopholed wicket, into a narrow staircase, which, 
 again, should open on halls of light, full of blazing 
 wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a 
 small mysterious man would point out the secret 
 hiding-room, and the passages leading on to the 
 roof or into the next house, in case of a raid 
 by the police. Such was the old idea of a 
 "Hell;" but the advance of Thought has altered 
 all these early notions. The Decade Club was like 
 any other small club. A current of warm air, 
 charged with tobacco-smoke, rushed forth into the 
 frosty night when the swinging door was opened ; 
 a sleepy porter looked out of his little nest, and 
 Cranley wrote the names of the companions he 
 introduced in a book which was kept for that 
 purpose. 
 
 " Now you are free of the Cockpit for the night," 
 he said, genially. " It 's a livelier place, in the 
 small hours, than that classical Olympic we 've 
 just left." 
 
 They went upstairs, passing the doors of one or 
 two rooms, lit up but empty, except for two or 
 three men who were sleeping in uncomfortable 
 attitudes on sofas. The whole of the breadth of 
 the first floor, all the drawing-room of the house 
 before it became a club, had been turned into a 
 card-room, from which brilliant lights, voices, and 
 a heavy odour of tobacco and alcohol poured out 
 when the door was opened. A long green baize- 
 covered table, of very light wood, ran down the 
 centre of the room, while refreshments stood on 
 smaller tables, and a servant out of livery sat, 
 half-asleep, behind a great desk in the remotest 
 corner. There were several empty chairs round 
 the green baize -covered table, at which some 
 twenty men were sitting, with money before them ; 
 while one, in the middle, dealt out the cards on a 
 broad flap of smooth black leather let into the
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 9 
 
 baize. Every now and then he threw the cards 
 he had been dealing into a kind of well in the 
 table, and after every deal he raked up his win- 
 nings with a rake, or distributed gold and counters 
 to the winners, as mechanically as if he had been a 
 croupier at Monte Carlo. The players, who were 
 all in evening dress, had scarcely looked up when 
 the strangers entered the room. 
 
 "Brought some recruits, Cranley?" asked the 
 
 Banker, adding, as he looked at his hand, "J'en 
 
 donne /" and becoming absorbed in his game again. 
 
 " The game you do not understand ? " said 
 
 Cranley to one of his recruits. 
 
 " Not quite," said the lad, shaking bis head. 
 "All right; I will soon show you all about it; 
 and I wouldn't play, if I were you, tillyou know 
 all about it. Perhaps, after you know all about it, 
 you '11 think it wiser not to play at all. At least, 
 you might well think so abroad, where very fishy 
 things are often done. Here it's all right, of 
 course." 
 
 " Is baccarat a game you can be cheated at, 
 then — I mean, when people are inclined to cheat ? " 
 " Cheat ? Oh, rather ! There are about a 
 dozen ways of cheating at baccarat." 
 
 The other young men from Maitland's party 
 gathered round their mentor, who continued his 
 instructions in a low voice, and from a distance 
 whence the play could be watched, while the 
 players were not likely to be disturbed by the 
 conversation. 
 
 " Cheating is the simplest thing in the world, at 
 Nice or in Paris," Cranley went on; "but to show 
 you how it is done, in case you ever do play in 
 foreign parts, I must explain the game. You see 
 the men first put down their stakes within the 
 thin white line on the edge of the table. Then 
 the Banker deals two cards to one of the men on
 
 10 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 his left, and all the fellows on that side stand by 
 his luck. Then he deals two to a chappie on his 
 right, and all the punters on the right back that 
 sportsman. And he deals two cards to himself. 
 The game is to get as near nine as possible, ten, 
 and court cards, not counting at all. If the Banker 
 has eight or nine, he does not offer cards ; if he 
 has less, he gives the two players, if they ask for 
 them, one card each, and takes one himself if 
 he chooses. If they hold six, seven, or eight, 
 they stand; if less, they take a card. Sometimes 
 one stands at five : it depends. Then the Banker 
 wins if he is nearer nine than the players, and 
 they win if they are better than he ; and that 's 
 the whole affair." 
 
 " I don't see where the cheating can come in," 
 said one of the young fellows. 
 
 " Dozens of w r ays, as I told you. A man may 
 have an understanding with the waiter, and play 
 with arranged packs; but the waiter is always 
 the dangerous element in that little combination. 
 He 's sure to peach or blackmail his accomplice. 
 Then the cards may be marked. I remember, at 
 Ostend, one fellow, a big German ; he wore spec- 
 tacles, like all Germans, and he seldom gave the 
 players anything better than three court cards 
 when he dealt. One evening he was in awful 
 luck, when he happened to go for his cigar-case, 
 which he had left in the hall in his great -coat 
 pocket. He laid down his spectacles on the table, 
 and someone tried them on. As soon as he took 
 up the cards he gave a start, and sang out, ' Here 's 
 a swindle ! Nous sommes voles ! ' He could see, by 
 the help of the spectacles, that all the nines and 
 court cards were marked ; and the spectacles were 
 regular patent double million magnifiers." 
 
 " And what became of the owner of the glasses ? " 
 
 " Oh, he just looked into the room, saw the man
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. II 
 
 wearing them, and didn't wait to say good-night. 
 He just went I" 
 
 Here Cranley chuckled. 
 
 " I remember another time, at Nice : I alwa3's 
 laugh when I think of it ! There was a little 
 Frenchman, who played nearly every night. He 
 would take the Bank for three or four turns, and 
 he almost always won. Well, one night he had 
 been at the theatre, and he left before the end of 
 the piece and looked in at the Cercle. He took 
 the Bank : lost once, won twice ; then he offered 
 cards. The man who was playing nodded, to 
 show he would take one, and the Frenchman laid 
 down an eight of clubs, a greasy, dirty old rag, 
 with theatre francais de nice stamped on it in 
 big letters. It was his ticket of re-admission at 
 the theatre that they gave him when he went out, 
 and it had got mixed up with a nice little arrange- 
 ment in cards he had managed to smuggle into 
 the club pack. I '11 never forget his face and 
 the other man's when Theatre Francais turned up. 
 However, you understand the game now, and if 
 you want to play, we had better give fine gold to 
 the waiter in exchange for bone counters, and get 
 to work." 
 
 Two or three of the visitors followed Cranley to 
 the corner where the white dissipated -looking 
 waiter of the card-room sat, and provided them- 
 selves with black and red jetons (bone counters) of 
 various values, to be redeemed at the end of the 
 game. 
 
 When they returned to the table the Banker was 
 just leaving his post. 
 
 "I'm cleaned out," said he, " decave. Good- 
 night," and he walked away. 
 
 No one seemed anxious to open a bank. The 
 punters had been winning all night, and did not 
 like to desert their luck.
 
 12 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 "Oh, this will never do," cried Cranley. "If 
 no one else will open a bank, I '11 risk a couple 
 of hundred, just to show you beginners how it is 
 done!" 
 
 Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the 
 smooth silver cigarette-case before him. Then 
 he began to deal. 
 
 Fortune at first was all on the side of the 
 players. Again and again Cranley chucked out 
 the counters he had lost, which the others gathered 
 in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his 
 little rake in the direction of a more venturesome 
 winner. The new comers, who were winning, 
 thought they had never taken part in a sport 
 more gentlemanly and amusing. 
 
 " I must have one shy," said Martin, one of the 
 boys who had hitherto stood with Barton, behind 
 the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth 
 with a diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. 
 He staked five pounds and won ; he left the whole 
 sum on and lost, lost again, a third time, and then 
 said, " May I draw a cheque ? " 
 
 " Of course you may," Cranley answered. " The 
 waiter will give you tout ce qu'il faut pour ecrire, as 
 the stage directions say ; but I don't advise you 
 to plunge. You 've lost quite enough. Yet they 
 say the devil favours beginners, so you can't come 
 to grief." 
 
 The young fellow by this time was too excited 
 to take advice. His cheeks had an angry flush, 
 his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some 
 paper currency of considerable value. The parallel 
 horizontal wrinkles of the gambler were just 
 sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he re- 
 turned with his paper. The bank had been losing, 
 but not largely. The luck turned again as soon 
 as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice 
 consecutively he lost.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 13 
 
 " Excuse me," said Barton suddenly to Cranley, 
 " may I help myself to one of your cigarettes ? " 
 
 He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and 
 Cranley saw him pick up the silver cigarette-case. 
 It was a handsome piece of polished silver. 
 
 " Certainly ; help yourself. Give me back my 
 cigarette-case, please, when you have done with it." 
 
 He dealt again, and lost. 
 
 "What a nice case!" said Barton, examining 
 it closely. " There is an Arabic word engraved 
 on it." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Cranley, rather impatiently, 
 holding out his hand for the thing, and pausing 
 before he dealt. " The case was given me by the 
 late Khedive, dear old Ismail, bless him ! The 
 word is a talisman." 
 
 " I thought so. The case seemed to bring you 
 luck," said Barton. 
 
 Cranley half turned and threw a quick look at 
 him, as rapid and timid as the glance of a hare in 
 its form. 
 
 " Come, give me it back, please," he said. 
 
 " Now, just oblige me : let me try what there 
 is in luck. Go on playing while I rub up my 
 Arabic, and try to read this ineffable name on the 
 case. Is it the Word of Power of Solomon ?" 
 
 Cranley glanced back again. "All right," he 
 said, " as you are so curious,-^/'m donne /" 
 
 He offered cards, and lost. Martin's face bright- 
 ened up. His paper currency was coming back 
 to him. 
 
 "It's a shame," grumbled Cranley, "to rob a 
 fellow of his fetich. Waiter, a small brandy-and- 
 soda ! Confound )' , our awkwardness ! Why do 
 you spill it over the cards ?" 
 
 By Cranley's own awkwardness, more than the 
 waiter's, a little splash of the liquid had fallen in 
 front of him, on the black leather part of the table 
 
 2
 
 14 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 where he dealt. He went on dealing, and his luck 
 altered again. The rake was stretched out over 
 both halves of the long table : the gold and notes 
 and counters, with a fluttering assortment of 
 Martin's IOU's, were all dragged in. Martin 
 went to the den of the money-changer sullenly, 
 and came back with fresh supplies. 
 
 " Banco ! " he cried, meaning that he challenged 
 Cranley for all the money in the bank. There 
 must have been some seven hundred pounds. 
 
 "All right," said Cranley, taking a sip of his 
 soda water. He had dealt two cards, when his 
 hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and 
 cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from 
 behind and caught him by the wrists. 
 
 Cranley made one weak automatic movement to 
 extricate himself; then he sat perfectly still. His 
 face, which he turned over his shoulder, was white 
 beneath the stains of tan, and his lips were blue. 
 
 "Damn you!" he snarled. "What trick are 
 you after now ?" 
 
 " Are you drunk, Barton ?" cried some one. 
 
 "Leave him alone!" shouted some of the 
 players, rising from their seats ; while others, 
 pressing round Barton, looked over his shoulder 
 without seeing any excuse for his behaviour. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Barton, in a steady voice, 
 " I leave my conduct in the hands of the club. 
 If I do not convince them that Mr. Cranley has 
 been cheating, I am quite at their disposal, and 
 at his. Let anyone who doubts what I say look 
 here." 
 
 " Well, I 'm looking here, and I don't see what 
 you are making such a fuss about," said Martin, 
 from the group behind, peering over at the table 
 and the cards. 
 
 " Will you kindly No, it is no use." The 
 
 last remark was addressed to the captive, who
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 15 
 
 had tried to release his hands. " Will you kindly 
 take up some of the cards and deal them slowly, 
 to right and left, over that little puddle of spilt 
 soda water on the leather ? Get as near the table 
 as you can." 
 
 There was a dead silence while Martin made 
 this experiment. 
 
 "By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!" 
 cried Martin. 
 
 " Of course you can ; and if you had the art of 
 correcting fortune, you could make use of what 
 you see. At the least )'0u would know whether to 
 take a card or stand." 
 
 "I didn't," said the wretched Cranley. " How 
 on earth was I to know that the infernal fool of a 
 waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you 
 a chance against me ? " 
 
 "You spilt the liquor yourself," Barton answered 
 coolly, " when I took away your cigarette-case. 
 I saw you passing the cards over the surface of 
 it, which anyone can see for himself is a perfect 
 mirror. I tried to warn you — for I did not want a 
 row — when I said the case ' seemed to bring you 
 luck.' But you would not be warned; and when 
 the cigarette-case trick was played out, you fell 
 back on the old dodge with the drop of water. 
 Will anyone else convince himself that I am right 
 before I let Mr. Cranley go?" 
 
 One or two men passed the cards, as they had 
 seen the Banker do, over the spilt soda water. 
 
 "It's a clear case," they said. "Leave him 
 alone." 
 
 Barton slackened his grip of Cranley's hands, 
 and for some seconds they lay as if paralysed on 
 the table before him, white and cold, with livid 
 circles round the wrists. The man's face was 
 deadly pale, and wet with perspiration. He put 
 out a trembling hand to the glass of brandy-and- 
 
 2 *
 
 l6 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 water that stood beside him; the glass rattled against 
 his teeth as he drained all the contents at a gulp. 
 
 " You shall hear from me," he grumbled, and, with 
 an inarticulate muttering of threats, he made his 
 way, stumbling and catching at chairs, to the door. 
 When he had got outside, he leaned against the wall, 
 like a drunken man, and then shambled across the 
 landing into a reading-room. It was empty, and 
 Cranley fell into a large easy-chair, where he lay 
 crumpled up, rather than sat, for perhaps ten 
 minutes, holding his hand against his heart. 
 
 " They talk about having the courage of one's 
 opinions. Confound it ! Why haven't I the 
 nerve for my character ? Hang this heart of 
 mine ! Will it never stop thumping ? " 
 
 He sat up and looked about him, then rose and 
 walked towards the table ; but his head began to 
 swim, and his eyes to darken ; so he fell back 
 again in his seat, feeling drowsy and beaten. 
 Mechanically he began to move the hand that hung 
 over the arm of his low chair, and it encountered 
 a newspaper which had fallen on the floor. He 
 lifted it automatically and without thought : it 
 was the Times. Perhaps to try his eyes, and see 
 if they served him again after his collapse, he ran 
 them down the columns of the advertisements. 
 
 Suddenly something caught his attention ; his 
 whole lax figure grew braced again as he read 
 a passage steadily through more than twice or 
 thrice. When he had quite mastered this, he 
 threw down the paper and gave a low whistle. 
 
 " So the old boy 's dead," he reflected ; "and that 
 drunken tattooed ass and his daughter are to come 
 in for the money and the mines ! They'll be clever 
 that find him, and I sha'n't give them his address ! 
 What luck some men have ! " 
 
 Here he fell into deep thought, his brows and 
 lips working eagerly.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 17 
 
 " I '11 do it," he said at last, cutting the adver- 
 tisement out of the paper with a penknife. "It 
 isn't often a man has a chance to star in this game 
 of existence. I 've lost all my own social Lives : 
 one in that business at Oxford, one in the row at 
 Ali Musjid, and the third went — to-night. But 
 I '11 star. Every sinner should desire a new Life," 
 he added with a sneer.* 
 
 He rose, steady enough now, walked to the 
 door, paused and listened, heard the excited voices 
 in the card-room still discussing him, slunk down- 
 stairs, took his hat and great-coat, and swaggered 
 past the porter. Mechanically he felt in his 
 pocket, as he went out of the porch, for his 
 cigarette-case ; and he paused at the little fount 
 of fire at the door. He was thinking that he 
 would never light a cigarette there again. 
 
 Presently he remembered, and swore. He had 
 left his case on the table of the card-room, where 
 Barton had laid it down, and he had not the 
 impudence to send back for it. 
 
 "Vile damnum /" he muttered (for he had enjoyed 
 a classical education), and so disappeared in the 
 frosty night. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Jn tbe Snow, 
 
 H E foul and foggy night of early 
 
 February was descending, some 
 
 weeks after the scene in the Cockpit, 
 
 on the river and the town. Night was 
 
 falling from the heavens ; or rather, 
 
 night seemed to be rising from the earth, — steamed 
 
 up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the 
 
 * " Starring " is paying for a new " Life " at Pool.
 
 l8 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 streets, and from the vapours that swam above the 
 squalid houses. There was coal-smoke and a taste 
 of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous night 
 there had been such a storm as London seldom 
 sees ; the powdery, flying snow had been blown for 
 many hours before a tyrannous north-east gale, 
 and had settled down, like dust in a neglected 
 chamber, over every surface of the city. Drifts 
 and " snow-wreathes," as northern folk say, were 
 lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as 
 deep as they lie when sheep are " smoored " on the 
 sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in the desolate 
 Border-land. All day London had been struggling 
 under her cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish 
 patient trying to throw off a heavy white counter- 
 pane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. 
 The pavements were three inches deep in a rich 
 greasy deposit of mud and molten ice. Above the 
 round glass or iron coverings of coal cellars the foot 
 passengers slipped, " ricked " their backs, and swore 
 as they stumbled, if they did not actually fall down, 
 in the filth. Those who were in haste, and could 
 afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in hansoms 
 with two horses driven tandem. The snow still 
 lay comparatively white on the surface of the less- 
 frequented thoroughfares, with straight shining 
 black marks where wheels had cut their way. 
 
 At intervals in the day the fog had fallen 
 blacker than night. Down by the waterside the 
 roads were deep in a mixture of a weak grey- 
 brown or coffee colour. Beside one of the bridges 
 in Chelsea, an open slope leads straight to the 
 stream, and here, in the afternoon, — for a late 
 start was made, — the carts of the Vestry had been 
 led, and loads of slush that had choked up the 
 streets in the more fashionable parts of the 
 town had been unladen into the river. This may 
 not be the most scientific or sanitary mode of
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I9 
 
 clearing the streets and squares, but it was the 
 way that recommended itself to the wisdom of the 
 Contractor. In the early evening the fog had light- 
 ened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so 
 thick that the bridge was lost in mist half-way 
 across the river, like the arches of that fatal bridge 
 beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts of the 
 vessels moored on the near bank disappeared 
 from view, and only a red lamp or two shone 
 against the blackness of the hulks. From the 
 public-house at the corner — the Hit or Miss — 
 streamed a fan-shaped flood of light, soon choked 
 by the fog. 
 
 Out of the muddy twilight of a street that 
 runs at right angles to the river, a cart came 
 crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was 
 faintly visible before the brown horses (they were 
 yoked tandem) came into view. This cart was 
 driven down to the water-edge, and was there up- 
 turned, with much shouting and cracking of whips 
 on the part of the men engaged, and with a good 
 deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the 
 side of the horses. 
 
 One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at 
 the iron pins which kept the backboard of the 
 cart in its place. 
 
 " Blarm me, Bill," he grumbled, "if the blessed 
 pins ain't froze." 
 
 Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing 
 on them afterwards, and smacking his arms across 
 his breast to restore the circulation. 
 
 The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared 
 speechlessly as he stood at the smoking head of the 
 leader, and the other man tugged again at the pin. 
 
 " It won't budge," he cried at last. "Just run 
 into the Hit or Miss at the corner, mate, and 
 borrow a hammer ; and you might get a pint o' 
 hot beer when ye 're at it. Here's fourpence.
 
 20 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 I was with three that found a quid in the Mac,* 
 end of last week : here 's the last of it." 
 
 He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so 
 numb that he could scarcely capture the nimble 
 fourpence. Why should the " nimble ninepence" 
 have the monopoly of agility ? 
 
 " I 'm Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don't yer know," 
 said Bill, with regretful sullenness. His ragged 
 great -coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure 
 badge of avowed and total abstinence. 
 
 " Blow yer blue ribbon ! Hold on where ye are, 
 and I '11 bring the bloomin' hammer myself." 
 
 Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through 
 the snow, his legs protected by bandages of straw 
 ropes. Presently he reappeared in the warmer 
 yellow of the light that poured through the win- 
 dows of the old public-house. He was wiping his 
 mouth with the back of his hand, which he then 
 thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a 
 hammer to his body under his armpit. 
 
 "A little hot beer would do yer bloomin' temper 
 a deal more good than ten yards o' blue ribbon at 
 sixpence. Blue ruin 's more in my line," observed 
 Thomas, epigrammatically, much comforted by 
 his refreshment. And with two well-directed taps 
 he knocked the pins out of their sockets, and let 
 down the backboard of the cart. 
 
 Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the 
 horses forward ; the cart was tilted up, and the 
 snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow shore- 
 water, partly on to the edge of the slope. 
 
 "Ullo!" cried Tommy suddenly. "'Ere's an 
 old coat-sleeve a sticking out o' the snow." 
 
 " 'Alves ! " exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on 
 the main chance. 
 
 * "A quid in the Mac " — a sovereign in the street-scrapings, 
 called Mac from Macadam, and employed as mortar in build- 
 ing eligible freehold tenements.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 21 
 
 " 'Alves ! of course, 'alves. Ain't we on the 
 same lay," replied the chivalrous Tommy. Then 
 he cried, "Lord preserve us, mate; there's a cove 
 in the coat F' 
 
 He ran forward, and clutched the elbow 
 of the sleeve which stood up stiffly above the 
 frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well 
 have thought at first that the sleeve was empty, 
 such a very stick of bone and skin was the arm 
 he grasped within it. 
 
 " Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap ! " 
 
 " Is he dead ? " asked Bill, leaving the horses' 
 heads. 
 
 "Dead! he's bound to be dead, under all that 
 weight. But how the dickens did he get into the 
 cart ? Guess we didn't shovel him in, eh : we 'd 
 have seen him ? " 
 
 By this time the two men had dragged a meagre 
 corpse out of the snow heap. A rough worn old 
 pilot -coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers, 
 and two broken boots through which the toes 
 could be seen peeping ruefully, were all the visible 
 raiment of the body. The clothes lay in heavy 
 swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones 
 that had once been a tall man. The peaked blue 
 face was half hidden by a fell of iron-grey hair, 
 and a grizzled beard hung over the breast. 
 
 The two men stood for some moments staring 
 at the corpse. A wretched woman in a thin grey 
 cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and 
 shivered beside the body for a moment. 
 
 "He's a goner," was her criticism. "I wish 
 I was." 
 
 With this aspiration she shivered back into the 
 fog again, walking on her unknown way. By this 
 time a dozen people had started up from nowhere, 
 and were standing in a tight ring round the body. 
 The behaviour of the people was typical of London
 
 22 THE MARK OF CAltf. 
 
 gazers. No one made any remark, or offered any 
 suggestion ; they simply stared with all their eyes 
 and souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement 
 of the spectacle. They were helpless, idealess, 
 interested and unconcerned. 
 
 "Run and fetch a peeler, Bill," said Tommy at 
 last. 
 
 " Peeler be hanged ! Bloomin' likely I am to 
 find a peeler. Fetch him yourself." 
 
 " Sulky devil you are," answered Tommy, who 
 was certainly of milder mood ; whereas Bill seemed 
 a most unalluring example of the virtue of Tem- 
 perance. It is true that he had only been " Blue 
 Ribbon" since the end of his Christmas bout — that 
 is, for nearly a fortnight, — and Virtue, a precarious 
 tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings. 
 
 Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk 
 had deepened into night. The crowd round the 
 body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it 
 might truly be said that "the more part knew not 
 wherefore they had come together." The centre of 
 interest was not a fight, they were sure, otherwise 
 the ring would have been swaying this way and 
 that. Neither was it a dispute between a cab- 
 man and his fare : there was no sound of angry 
 repartees. It might be a drunken woman, or a 
 man in a fit, or a lost child. So the outer circle 
 of spectators, who saw nothing, waited, and pa- 
 tiently endured till the moment of revelation 
 should arrive. Respectable people who passed 
 only glanced at the gathering : respectable people 
 may wonder, but they never do find out the mys- 
 tery within a London crowd. On the extreme 
 fringe of the mob were some amateurs who had 
 just been drinking in the Hit or Miss. They were 
 noisy, curious, and impatient. 
 
 At last Tommy arrived with two policemen, who, 
 acting on his warning, had brought with them a
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 23 
 
 stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead 
 man was found in the cart-load of snow. 
 
 Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity 
 opened. One of the officers stooped down and 
 flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where the 
 dead face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow. 
 
 " Lord, it 's old Dicky Shields ! " cried a voice 
 in the crowd, as the peaked still features were 
 lighted up. 
 
 The man who spoke was one of the latest spec- 
 tators that had arrived, after the news that some 
 pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed 
 into the warm alcoholic air and within the swinging 
 doors of the Hit or Miss. 
 
 "You know him, do you ? " asked the policeman 
 with the lantern. 
 
 " Know him, rather ! Didn't I give him six- 
 pence for rum when he tattooed this here cross 
 and anchor on my arm ? Dicky was a grand hand 
 at tattooing, bless you : he 'd tattooed himself all 
 over ! " 
 
 The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, 
 on his burly red forearm, the emblems of Faith 
 and Hope rather neatly executed in blue. 
 
 " Why, he was in the Hit ov Miss,'' the speaker 
 went on, " no later nor last night." 
 
 " Wot beats me," said Tommy again, as the 
 policeman lifted the light corpse, and tried vainly 
 to straighten the frozen limbs, " Wot beats me is 
 how he got in this here cart of ours." 
 
 "He's light enough surely," added Tommy; 
 " but I warrant we didn't chuck him on the cart 
 with the snow in Belgrave Square." 
 
 " Where do you put up at night ? " asked one of 
 the policemen suddenly. He had been ruminating 
 on the mystery. 
 
 " In the yard there, behind that there hoarding," 
 answered Tommy, pointing to a breached and
 
 24 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 battered palisade near the corner of the public- 
 house. 
 
 At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with 
 its parti-coloured tatters of damp and torn adver- 
 tisements, lay a considerable space of waste 
 ground. The old houses that recently occupied 
 the site had been pulled down, probably as con- 
 demned " slums," in some moment of reform, 
 when people had nothing better to think of than 
 the housing of the poor. 
 
 There had been an idea of building model 
 lodgings for tramps, with all the latest improve- 
 ments, on the space, but the idea evaporated 
 when something else occurred to divert the 
 general interest. Now certain sheds, with roofs 
 sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind 
 of lumber-room for the parish. 
 
 At this time the scavengers' carts were housed 
 in the sheds, or outside the sheds when these 
 were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for 
 the horses, and thus the waste ground was not 
 left wholly unoccupied. 
 
 " Was this cart o' yours under the sheds all 
 night or in the open ?" asked the policeman with 
 an air of penetration. 
 
 "Just outside the shed, worn't it, Bill ?" replied 
 Tommy. 
 
 Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to 
 commit himself. 
 
 " If the cart was outside," said the policeman, 
 " then the thing's plain enough. You started from 
 there, didn't you, with the cart in the afternoon ?" 
 
 "Ay," answered Tommy. 
 
 "And there was a little sprinkle o' snow in the 
 cart?" 
 
 " May be there wos. I don't remember one 
 way or the other." 
 
 " Then you must be a stupid if you don't see that
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 25 
 
 this here cove,"pointing to the dead man, "got drink- 
 ing too much last night, lost hisself, and wandered 
 inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the cart." 
 
 " Snow do make a fellow bloomin' sleepy," one 
 of the crowd assented. 
 
 " Well, he never wakened no more, and the 
 snow had covered over his body when you started 
 with the' cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He 's 
 light enough to make no difference to the weight. 
 Was it dark when you started ? " 
 
 " One of them spells of fog was on : you could 
 hardly see your hand," grunted Tommy. 
 
 " Well then, it 's as plain as — as the nose on 
 your face," said the policeman, without any sar- 
 castic intentions. " That 's how it was." 
 
 " Bravo, Bobby ! " cried one of the crowd. 
 "They should make you an inspector, and set 
 you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves." 
 
 The policeman was not displeased at this 
 popular tribute to his shrewdness. Dignity for- 
 bade him, however, to acknowledge the compli- 
 ment, and he contented himself with lifting the 
 two handles of the stretcher which were next him. 
 A covering was thrown over the face of the dead 
 man, and the two policemen, with their burden, 
 began to make their wa3' northwards to the hospital. 
 
 A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled 
 into a tail of street boys and girls. These accom- 
 panied the body till it disappeared from their eyes 
 within the hospital doors. Then they waited for 
 half an hour or so, and at last seemed to evapo- 
 rate into the fog. . 
 
 By this time Tommy and his mate had unhar- 
 nessed their horses and taken them to stable, the 
 cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), 
 and Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influ- 
 ences of the occasion as to tear off his blue badge 
 and follow Tommy into the Hit or Miss.
 
 26 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and 
 curious, accompanied them, intent on providing 
 with refreshments and plying with questions the 
 heroes of so remarkable an adventure. It is true 
 that they already knew all Tommy and Bill had 
 to tell ; but there is a pleasure, in moments of 
 emotional agitation, in repeating at intervals the 
 same questions, and making over and over again 
 the same profound remarks. The charm of these 
 performances was sure to be particularly keen 
 within the very walls where the dead man had 
 probably taken his last convivial glass, and where 
 some light was certain to be thrown, by the land- 
 lady or her customers, on the habits and history 
 of poor Dicky Shields. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 an Bcaoemtc jpotbouse. 
 
 HE Hit or Miss tavern, to customers 
 (rough customers, at least) who en- 
 tered it on a foggy winter night, 
 seemed merely a public by the river's 
 brim. Not being ravaged and parched 
 by a thirst for the picturesque, Tommy and his 
 mates failed to pause and observe the architectural 
 peculiarities of the building. Even if they had 
 been of a romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog 
 was so thick that they could have seen little to 
 admire, though there was plenty to be admired. 
 The Hit or Miss was not more antique in its aspect 
 than modern in its fortunes. Few public-houses, 
 if any, boasted for their landlord such a person as 
 Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien's, in 
 the University of Oxford.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 27 
 
 It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to 
 explain how this arrangement came into existence. 
 We have already made acquaintance with " mine 
 host " of the Hit or Miss, and found him to be by 
 no means the rosy, genial Boniface of popular 
 tradition. That a man like Maitland should be 
 the lessee of a waterside tavern, like the Hit ov 
 Miss, was only one of the anomalies of this odd 
 age of ours. An age of revivals, restorations, ex- 
 periments, — an age of dukes who are Socialists, — 
 an age which sees the East -end brawling in 
 Pall Mall, and parties of West -end tourists 
 personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway, — 
 need not wonder at Maitland's eccentric choice in 
 philanthropy. 
 
 Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been 
 an unpopular lonely boy at a public school, where 
 he was known as a "sap," or assiduous student, 
 and was remarked for an almost unnatural indif- 
 ference to cricket and rowing. At Oxford, as he 
 had plenty of money, he had been rather less 
 unpopular. His studies ultimately won him a 
 Fellowship at St. Gatien's, where his services as 
 a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed 
 a great desire to improve his own culture by 
 acquaintance with humanity, and to improve 
 humanity by acquaintance with himself. This 
 view of life and duty had been urged on him by 
 his college "coach, philosopher and friend, Mr. 
 Joseph Bielby. A man of some energy of char- 
 acter, Bielby had made Maitland leave his desul- 
 tory reading and dull hospitalities at St. Gatien's, 
 and betake himself to practical philanthropy. 
 
 " You tell me you don't see much in life," 
 Bielby had said. " Throw yourself into the life of 
 others, who have not much to live on." 
 
 Maitland made a few practical experiments in 
 philanthropy at Oxford. He once subsidised a
 
 28 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had 
 his own windows broken by conservative under- 
 graduates. He urged on the citizens the de- 
 sirability of running a steam tramway for the 
 people from the station to Cowley, through Wor- 
 cester, John's, Balliol, and Wadham Gardens 
 and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition 
 in favour of having three " devils," or steam 
 whoopers, yelling in different quarters of the town 
 between five and six o'clock every morning, that 
 the artisans might be awakened in time for the 
 labours of the day. 
 
 As Maitland's schemes made more noise than 
 progress at Oxford, Bielby urged him to come out 
 of his Alma Mater, and practise benevolence in 
 town. He had a great scheme for building over 
 Hyde Park, and creating a Palace of Art in 
 Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While 
 pushing this ingenious idea in the columns of 
 the Daily Trumpet, Maitland looked out for some 
 humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy 
 notion of taking a philanthropic public-house oc- 
 curred to him, and was acted upon at the first 
 opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own 
 bar-room he could acquire an intimate knowledge 
 of humanity in its least sophisticated aspects. 
 He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and 
 adulterated stuff. He would raise the tone of his 
 customers, while he would insensibly gain some of 
 their exuberant vitality. He would shake off the 
 prig (which he knew to be a strong element in his 
 nature), and would, at the same time, encourage 
 temperance by providing good malt liquor. 
 
 The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing 
 to do was to acquire a tavern. Now, Maitland 
 had been in the Oxford movement just when 
 aestheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun- 
 stricken lily, while philanthropy and political
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 29 
 
 economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in, 
 like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there sur- 
 vived a little of the old leaven of the student of 
 the Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of " im- 
 pressions " and of antiquated furniture. He was 
 always struggling against this " side," as he called 
 it, of his " culture," and in his hours of reaction 
 he was all for steam tramways, "devils," and 
 Kindergartens standing where they ought not. 
 But there were moments when his old innocent 
 craving for the picturesque got the upper hand ; 
 and in one of those moments Maitland had come 
 across the chance of acquiring the lease of the 
 Hit or Miss. 
 
 That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he 
 closed with his opportunity. The Hit or Miss 
 was as attractive to an artistic as most public- 
 houses are to a thirsty soul. When the Embank- 
 ment was made, the bridge-house had been one of 
 a street of similar quaint and many-gabled old 
 buildings that leaned up against each other for 
 mutual support near the river's edge. But the 
 Embankment slowly brought civilisation that way: 
 the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned 
 and demolished, till at last only the tavern re- 
 mained, with hoardings and empty spaces, and a 
 dust-yard round it. 
 
 The house stood at what had been a corner. 
 The red-tiled roof was so high pitched as to be 
 almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of 
 the attics were as picturesque as anything in 
 Nuremberg. The side walls were broken in their 
 surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering pro- 
 jecting casements, and the house was shored up 
 and supported by huge wooden beams. You 
 entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) 
 by a low -browed door in front, if you passed 
 in as ordinary customers did. At one corner 
 
 3
 
 30 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned 
 sign : 
 
 "Jack's Bridge House. 
 
 "Hit or Miss — Luck's All." 
 
 But there was a side door, reached by walking 
 down a covered way, over which the strong oaken 
 rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the plaster) 
 lay bent and warped by years and the weight of 
 the building. From this door you saw the side, or 
 rather the back, which the house kept for its inti- 
 mates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled 
 roofs and dormer windows than that which faced 
 the street. The passage led down to a slum, and 
 on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty 
 space and the dust -yard, where the carts were 
 sheltered in sheds, or left beneath the sky, behind 
 the ruinous hoarding. 
 
 Within, the Hit or Miss looked cosy enough 
 to persons entering out of the cold and dark. 
 There was heat, light, and a bar-parlour with a 
 wide old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with 
 seats within the ingle. On these little benches 
 did Tommy and his friends make haste to place 
 themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing 
 rapidly, in a room within a room, as it were ; for 
 the big chimney-place was like a little chamber 
 by itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a 
 party have gained admittance to the bar-parlour, 
 where Maitland himself was wont to appear, now 
 and then, when he visited the tavern, and to pro- 
 duce by his mere presence, and without in the 
 least intending it, an Early Closing Movement. 
 
 But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. 
 Gullick, the widowed landlady, or rather manager, 
 was as eager to hear all the story of the finding of 
 poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside 
 had been. Again and again the narrative was 
 
 \
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 31 
 
 repeated, till conjecture once more began to take 
 the place of assertion. 
 
 "I wonder," asked one of the men, "how old 
 Dicky got the money for a booze ? " 
 
 " The money, ay, and the chance," said another. 
 " That daughter of his — a nice-looking girl she is 
 — kept poor Dicky pretty tight." 
 
 " Didn't let him get ," the epigrammatist of 
 
 the company was just beginning to put in, when 
 the brilliant witticism he was about to utter burst 
 at once on the intellect of all his friends. 
 
 " Didn't let him get tight, you was a-goin' to 
 say, Tomrrry," howled three or four at once, and 
 there ensued a great noise of the slapping of 
 thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at 
 intervals, like crackers. 
 
 " Dicky 'ad been 'avin' bad times for long," the 
 first speaker went on. " I guess he 'ad about 
 tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for 
 tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of 
 skin not made beautiful for ever about here." 
 
 "Ah! and there was no sale for his beasteses 
 and birdses nuther ; or else he was clean sold out, 
 and hadn't no capital to renew his stock of hairy 
 cats and young parrots." 
 
 " The very stuffed beasts, perched above old 
 Dicky's shop, had got to look real mangey and 
 mouldy. I think I see them now : the fox in the 
 middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at 
 one end, and that 'ere shiny old rhinoceros in the 
 porch under them picters of the dying deer and 
 t'other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky ! Where 
 he raised the price o' a drain, let alone a booze, 
 beats me, it does." 
 
 " Why," said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the 
 outer room during the conversation, " why, it was 
 a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat. A 
 most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big
 
 32 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 black beard. He used to meet Dicky here, in the 
 private room upstairs, and there Dicky used to 
 do him a turn of his trade — tattooing him, like. 
 ' I 'm doing him to pattern, mum,' Dicky sez, 
 sez he : ' a facsimile o' myself, mum.' It wasn't 
 much they drank neither, — just a couple of pints ; 
 for sez the sailor gentleman, he sez, ' I 'm afeared, 
 mum, our friend here can't carry much even of your 
 capital stuff. We must excuse,' sez he, ' the fail- 
 ings of an artis'; but I doesn't want his hand to 
 shake or slip when he 's a doin' me,' sez he. 
 'Might spile the pattern,' he sez, 'also hurt.' And 
 I wouldn't have served old Dicky with more than 
 was good for him, myself, not if it was ever so, I 
 wouldn't. I promised that poor daughter of his, 
 before Mr. Maitland sent her to school, — years 
 ago now, — I promised as I would keep an eye on 
 
 her father, and speak of A hangel, if here isn't 
 
 Mr. Maitland his very self! " 
 
 And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, 
 to welcome her landlord, the Fellow of St. Gatien's. 
 
 Immediately there was a stir among the men 
 seated in the ingle. One by one, — some with a 
 muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame- 
 faced awkwardness, — they shouldered and shuffled 
 out of the room. Maitland's appearance had pro- 
 duced its usual effect, and he was left alone with 
 his tenant. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Gullick," said poor Maitland, rue- 
 fully, " I came here for a chat with our friends — 
 a little social relaxation — on Economic questions, 
 and I seem to have frightened them all away." 
 
 "Oh, sir, they're a rough lot, and don't think 
 themselves company for the likes of you. But," 
 said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly, — with the delight of the 
 oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale, — " you 've 
 heard this hawful story ? Poor Miss Margaret, 
 sir ! It makes my blood "
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 33 
 
 What physiological effect on the circulation 
 Mrs. Gullick was about to ascribe to alarming 
 intelligence will never be known ; for Maitland, 
 growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted 
 her: 
 
 " What has happened to Miss Margaret ? Tell 
 me, quick ! " 
 
 " Nothing to herself, poor lamb, but her poor 
 father, sir." 
 
 Maitland seemed sensibly relieved. 
 
 " Well, what about her father ? " 
 
 " Gone, sir, — gone ! In a cartload o* snow, 
 this very evening, he was found, just outside o' 
 this very door." 
 
 "In a cartload of snow!" cried Maitland. 
 " Do you mean that he went away in it, or that 
 he was found in it dead ? " 
 
 "Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the 
 doctor said ; and in this very house he had been 
 no later than last night, and quite steady, sir, I 
 do assure you. He had been steady — oh, steady 
 for weeks." 
 
 Maitland assumed an expression of regret, 
 which, no doubt, he felt to a certain extent. But 
 in his sorrow there could not but have been some 
 relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philan- 
 thropic labours, had known old Dicky Shields, 
 the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hope- 
 less mauvais sujet. But Dicky's daughter, Margaret, 
 had been a daisy flourishing by the grimy water- 
 side, till the young social reformer transplanted 
 her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. 
 He was having her educated there, and after she 
 was educated — why, then, Maitland had at one 
 time entertained his own projects or dreams. In 
 the way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields 
 had been felt as an obstacle : not that he objected, — 
 on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his
 
 34 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 views in writing. There were times — there had 
 lately, above all, been times — when Maitland 
 reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in 
 this document. Dicky was not an eligible father- 
 in-law, however good and pretty a girl his daughter 
 might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an 
 obstacle : he was no longer (as he certainly had 
 been) in any man's way: he was nobody's enemy 
 now, not even his own. 
 
 The vision of all these circumstances passed 
 rapidly, like a sensation rather than a set of cohe- 
 rent thoughts, through Maitland's consciousness. 
 
 " Tell me everything you know of this wretched 
 business," he said, rising and closing the door 
 which led into the outer room. 
 
 " Well, sir, you have not been here for some 
 weeks, or you would know that Dicky had found a 
 friend lately, — an old shipmate, or petty-officer, he 
 called him, — a sailor-man. Well to do, he seemed; 
 the mate of a merchant vessel he might be. He 
 had known Dicky, I think, long ago at sea, and 
 he 'd bring him here ' to yarn with him,' he said, 
 once or twice it might be in this room, but mainly 
 in the parlour upstairs. He let old Dicky tattoo 
 him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of 
 earning an honest penny by his trade — a queer 
 trade it was. Never more than a pint, or a glass 
 of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. 
 Most considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. 
 Well, last night he brought him in about nine, and 
 they sat rather late ; and about twelve the sailor 
 comes in, rubbing his eyes, and ' Good-night, mum,' 
 sez he. ' My friend 's been gone for an hour. An 
 early bird he is, and I 've been asleep by myself. 
 If you please, I '11 just settle our little score. It 's 
 the last for a long time, for I 'm bound to-morrow 
 for the China Seas, eastward. Oh, mum, a 
 sailor's life ! ' So he pays, changing a half-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 35 
 
 sovereign, like a gentleman, and out he goes, and 
 that 's the last I ever see o' poor Dicky Shields 
 till he was brought in this afternoon, out of the 
 snow-cart, cold and stiff, sir." 
 
 "And how do you suppose all this happened? 
 How did Shields get into the cart ?" 
 
 " Well, that's just what they've been wondering 
 at, though the cart was handy and uncommon 
 convenient for a man as 'ad too much, if 'ad he 
 'ad; as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot 
 rum and water would not intoxicate a babe. May 
 be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and never 
 wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what's that?''' 
 screamed Mrs. Gullick, leaping to her feet in terror. 
 
 The latched door, which communicated with 
 the staircase, had been burst open, and a small 
 brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, 
 with a cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick's 
 bosom.,* 
 
 " Well, if ever I 'ad a fright !" that worthy lady 
 exclaimed, turning towards the startled Maitland, 
 and embracing at the same time the little animal 
 in an affectionate clasp. " Well, if ever there was 
 such a child as you, Lizer ! What is the matter 
 with you now ?" 
 
 " Oh, mother," cried the bear, " I dreamed of 
 that big Bird I saw on the roof, and I ran down- 
 stairs before I was 'alf awake, I was that horful 
 frightened." 
 
 " Well, you just go upstairs again, — and here 's a 
 sweet cake for you, — and you take this night-light," 
 said Mrs. Gullick, producing the articles she men- 
 tioned, "and put it in the basin careful, and knock 
 on the floor with the poker if you want me. If it 
 wasn't for that bearskin Mr. Toopny was kind 
 enough to let you keep, you 'd get your death o' 
 cold, you would, running about in the night. And 
 look 'ere, Lizer," she added, patting the child
 
 36 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 affectionately on the shoulder, "do get that there 
 Bird out o' your head. It 's just nothing but in- 
 digestion comes o' you and the other children, — 
 himps they may well call you, and himps I 'm 
 sure you are, — always wasting your screws on 
 pastry and lemonade and raspberry vinegar. Just 
 nothing but indigestion." 
 
 Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its 
 arms, in a tight embrace, about Mrs. Gullick's 
 neck ; and then, without lavishing attention on 
 Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be 
 heard skipping upstairs. 
 
 " I 'm sure, sir, I ask your pardon," exclaimed 
 poor Mrs. Gullick; " but Lizer's far from well just 
 now, and she did have a scare last night, or else, 
 which is more likely, her little inside (saving your 
 presence) has been upset with a supper the Man- 
 ager gave all them pantermime himps." 
 
 " But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a 
 bear?" 
 
 "She's such a favourite with the Manager, sir, 
 and the Property Man, and all of them at the 
 Hilayity, you can't think, sir," said Mrs. Gullick, 
 not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland's 
 general capacity for abstract speculation. " A 
 regular little genius that child is, though I says it 
 as shouldn't. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor 
 father, sir." And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron 
 to her eyes. 
 
 Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown, of 
 considerable merit ; but, like too many artists, he 
 was addicted beyond measure to convivial enjoy- 
 ment. Maitland had befriended him in his last 
 days, and had appointed Mrs. Gullick (and a 
 capital appointment it was) to look after his pro- 
 perty when he became landlord of the Hit or Miss. 
 
 "What a gift, sir, that child always had ! Why, 
 when she was no more than four, I well remember
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 37 
 
 her going to fetch the beer, and her being a little 
 late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she 
 came in with the jug, he made a cuff at her, not 
 to hurt her, and if the little thing didn't drop the 
 jug, and take the knap ! Lord, I thought Gullick 
 would 'a died laughing, and him so thirsty too." 
 
 "Take the knap ? " said Maitland, who imagined 
 that "the knap" must be some malady incident 
 to childhood. 
 
 " Oh, sir, it 's when one person cuffs at another 
 on the stage, you know, and the other slaps his 
 own hand, on the far side, to make the noise of a 
 box on the ear : that 's what we call ' taking the 
 knap ' in the profession. And the beer was spilt, 
 and the jug broken, and all, — Lizer was that clever! 
 And this is her second season, just ended, as a 
 nimp at the Hilarity pantermime ; and they 're 
 that good to her, they let her bring her bearskin 
 home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as 
 the Little Bear in The Three Bears, don't you know, 
 sir." 
 
 Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the 
 Great Bear, the Middle Bear, and the Little Tiny 
 Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned 
 paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the 
 Moon, and the Multitude of Stars in the Aryan 
 myth. But he had not seen the pantomime 
 founded on the traditional narrative. 
 
 " But what was the child saying about a big 
 Bird?" he asked. "What was it that frightened 
 her?" 
 
 " Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may 
 be, a little something hot at that supper last night; 
 and, besides, seeing so many queer things in pan- 
 termimes might put notions in a child's head. But 
 when she came home last night, a little late, Lizer 
 was very strange. She vowed and swore she had 
 seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common 
 
 j
 
 38 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 bird, skim over the street. Then when I had put 
 her to bed in the attic, down she flies, screaming 
 she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to 
 get her to sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed 
 and wear her theatre pantermime bearskin, that 
 fits her like another skin, — and she '11 be too big 
 for it next year, — just to keep her warm in that 
 cold garret. That 's all about it, sir. She '11 be 
 well enough in a day or two, will Lizer." 
 
 " I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick," said 
 Maitland; "and, as I am passing his way, I will 
 ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl. Now 
 I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone 
 about Miss Shields, you know, the better. It will 
 be very dreadful for her to learn about her father's 
 death, and we must try to prevent her from hear- 
 ing how it happened." 
 
 " Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing ; 
 " and being safe away at school, sir, we '11 hope 
 she won't be told no more than she needn't know 
 about it." 
 
 Maitland went forth into the thick night ; a half- 
 hearted London thaw was filling the shivering air 
 with a damp brown fog. 
 
 He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and 
 did not observe, in the raw darkness and in the 
 confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed at 
 no great distance by a man muffled up in a great- 
 coat and a woollen comforter. The stranger al- 
 most shouldered against him, as he stood reading 
 his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a 
 word here and there to save threepence. 
 
 " From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett. 
 
 " The Dovecot, Conisbeare, 
 
 " Tiverton. 
 
 " I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do not 
 let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead. Break 
 news."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 39 
 
 This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited 
 state, more trouble to construct than might have 
 been expected. We all know the wondrous bad- 
 ness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they 
 tear or blot the paper when we are in a hurry; and 
 Maitland felt hurried, though there was no need 
 for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen 
 comforter was buying stamps, and, finishing his 
 bargain before the despatch was stamped and 
 delivered, went out into the fog, and was no more 
 seen. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 /Ifctes /Iftarlett's. 
 
 , 
 
 IRLS' schools are chilly places. The 
 unfortunate victims, when you chance 
 to meet them, mostly look but half 
 alive, and dismally cold. Their noses 
 (however charming these features may 
 become in a year or two, or even may be in the 
 holidays) appear somehow of a frosty temperature 
 in the long dull months of school-time. The 
 hands, too, of the fair pupils are apt to seem 
 larger than common, inclined to blue in colour, 
 and, generally, are suggestive of inadequate circu- 
 lation. A tendency to get as near the fire as 
 possible (to come within the frontiers of the 
 hearth-rug is forbidden), and to cower beneath 
 shawls, is also characteristic of joyous girlhood — 
 school-girlhood, that is. In fact, one thinks of a 
 girls' school as too frequently a spot where no 
 one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a 
 funereal procession is not exercise, or Mutes might
 
 40 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 be athletes), and where there is apt to be a per- 
 vading impression of insufficient food, insufficient 
 clothing, and general unsatisfied tedium. 
 
 Miss Marlett's Establishment for the Highest 
 Education of Girls, more briefly known as " The 
 Dovecot, Conisbeare," was no exception, on a 
 particularly cold February day — the day after 
 Dicky Shields was found dead, — to these pretty 
 general rules. The Dovecot, before it became 
 a girls' school, was no doubt a pleasant English 
 home, where "the fires wass coot," as the High- 
 landman said. The red-brick house, with its 
 lawn sloping down to the fields, all level with 
 snow, stood at a little distance from the main 
 road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch 
 pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett's were not 
 good on this February morning. They never were 
 good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one of 
 those people who, fortunately for themselves, and 
 unfortunately for persons dwelling under their 
 roofs, never feel cold, or never know what they 
 feel. Therefore Miss Marlett never poked the 
 fire, which, consequently used to grow black 
 towards its early death, and was only revived, at 
 dangerously long intervals, by the most minute 
 doses of stimulant in the shape of rather damp 
 small coals. Now, supplies of coal had run low 
 at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that 
 the roads were snowed up, and that convoys of 
 the precious fuel were scarcely to be urged along 
 the heavy ways. 
 
 This did not matter much to the equable tem- 
 perature of Miss Marlett ; but it did matter a 
 great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom 
 were just speeding their morning toilette, by the 
 light of one candle, at the pleasant hour of five 
 minutes to seven on a frosty morning. 
 
 "Oh dear," said one maiden — Janey Harman
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 41 
 
 by name — whose blonde complexion should have 
 been pink and white, but was mottled with alien 
 and unbecoming hues, "why won't that old Cat 
 let us have fires to dress by ? Gracious, Mar- 
 garet, how black your fingers are ! " 
 
 "Yes; and I can't get them clean," said Mar- 
 garet, holding up two very pretty dripping hands, 
 and quoting, in mock heroic parody : 
 
 " Ho, dogs of false Tarentum, 
 Are not my hands washed white ? " 
 
 " No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies," 
 came a voice, accompanied by an icy draught, 
 from the door, which was opened just enough to 
 admit a fleeting vision of Miss Marlett's personal 
 charms. 
 
 " I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett," 
 replied the maiden thus rebuked, in a tone oi 
 injured innocence — 
 
 " ' Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,' " 
 
 — and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who 
 had not altogether the best of it in this affair of 
 outposts, and could not help feeling as if " that 
 Miss Shields " was laughing at her. 
 
 " Old Cat ! " the young lady went on, in a sub- 
 dued whisper. " But no wonder my hands were a 
 little black, Janey. You forget that it 's my week 
 to be Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and un- 
 expected movement, I have cut off some of the 
 enemy's supplies." 
 
 So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly 
 displayed a small deposit of coals, stored, for 
 secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket. 
 
 " Gracious, Daisy, how clever ! Well, you are 
 something like a stoker," exclaimed the third girl, 
 who by this time had finished dressing : " we shall 
 have a blaze to-night."
 
 42 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett's 
 school, by an unusual and inconsistent concession 
 to comfort and sanitary principles, the elder girls 
 were allowed to have fires in their bedrooms at 
 night, in winter. But seeing that these fires 
 resembled the laughter of the wicked, inasmuch as 
 they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns 
 under pots, the girls were driven to make pre- 
 datory attacks on fuel wherever it could be found. 
 Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each 
 other's fireplaces, and concealed the coal in their 
 pockets. But this conduct — resembling what is 
 fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands, that 
 they " eke out a precarious livelihood by taking 
 in each other's washing " — led to strife and bicker- 
 ing ; so that the Stoker for the week (as the girl 
 appointed to collect these supplies was called) had 
 to infringe a little on the secret household stores 
 of Miss Marlett. This week, as it happened, 
 Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore 
 herself in her high office as to extort the admiration 
 of the very housemaids. 
 
 " Even the ranks of Tusculum 
 Could scarce forbear to cheer," 
 
 if we may again quote the author who was at that 
 time Miss Shields's favourite poet. Miss Shields 
 had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was 
 mercifully unaware that not to detect the " pinch- 
 beck " in the Lays is the sign of a grovelling 
 nature. 
 
 Before she was sent to Miss Marlett's, four 
 years ere this date, Margaret Shields' instruc- 
 tion had been limited. "The best thing that 
 could be said for it," as the old sporting prophet 
 remarked of his own education, " was that it had 
 been mainly eleemosynary." The Chelsea School 
 Board fees could but rarely be extracted from old
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 43 
 
 Dicky Shields. But Robert Maitland, when still 
 young in philanthropy, had seen the clever, merry, 
 brown-eyed child at some school treat, or inspec- 
 tion, or other function ; had covenanted in some 
 sort with her shiftless parent ; had rescued the 
 child from the streets, and sent her as a pupil to 
 Miss Marlett's. Like Mr. Day, the accomplished 
 author of Sand ford and Merton, and creator of the 
 immortal Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had con- 
 ceived the hope that he might have a girl educated 
 up to his own intellectual standard, and made, or 
 "ready-made," a helpmate meet for him. He 
 was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian 
 of Margaret Shields, and the ward might be 
 expected (by anyone who did not know human 
 nature any better) to blossom into the wife. 
 
 Maitland could "please himself," as people 
 say; that is, in his choice of a partner he had 
 no relations to please — no one but the elect young 
 lady, who, after all, might not be "pleased" with 
 alacrity. 
 
 Whether pleased or not, there could be no 
 doubt that Margaret Shields was extremely pleas- 
 ing. Beside her two shivering chamber -mates 
 (" chamber-dekyns " they would have been called, 
 in Oxford slang, four hundred years ago), Miss 
 Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and comfort- 
 able, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss 
 Marlett's shuddering establishment, and by the 
 frosty light of a single candle. This young lady 
 was tall and firmly fashioned ; a nut-brown maid, 
 with a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair 
 rolled up in a big tight knot, and with a smile 
 (which knew when it was well off) always faithful 
 to her lips. These features, it is superfluous to 
 say in speaking of a heroine, "were rather too 
 large for regular beauty." She was perfectly 
 ready to face the enemy (in which light she
 
 44 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 humorously regarded her mistress) when the loud 
 cracked bell jangled at seven o'clock exactly, and 
 the drowsy girls came trooping from the dormi- 
 tories down into the wintry class-rooms. 
 
 Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were 
 the intellectual treat which awaited Margaret and 
 her companions. Arithmetic and slates ! Does 
 anyone remember — can anyone forget — how hor- 
 ribly distasteful a slate can be when the icy fingers 
 of youth have to clasp that cold educational 
 formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with 
 the greasy slate-pencil ? With her Colenso in her 
 lap, Margaret Shields grappled for some time with 
 the mysteries of Tare and Tret. "Tare an' 'ouns, 
 / call it," whispered Janey Harman, who had 
 taken, in the holidays, a " course " of Lever's 
 Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satis- 
 factory progress with her commercial calculations. 
 After hopelessly befogging herself, she turned to 
 that portion of Colenso's engaging work which is 
 most palpitating with actuality : 
 
 " If ten Surrey labourers, in mowing a field of forty 
 acres, drink twenty-three quarts of beer, how much 
 cider will thirteen Devonshire labourers consume in 
 building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles in 
 length, and four feet six in height ? " 
 
 This problem, also, proved too severe for 
 Margaret's mathematical endowments, and (it is 
 extraordinary how childish the very greatest girls 
 can be) she was playing at "oughts and crosses" 
 with Janey Harman when the arithmetic master 
 came round. He sat down, not unwillingly, 
 beside Miss Shields, erased, without comment, 
 the sportive diagrams, and set himself vigorously 
 to elucidate (by " the low cunning of algebra ") 
 the difficult sum from Colenso. 
 
 " You see, it is like this" he said, mumbling
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 45 
 
 rapidly, and scribbling a series of figures and 
 letters which the pupil was expected to follow 
 with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the 
 processes quite dazed Margaret : a result not 
 unusual when the teacher understands his topic 
 so well, and so much as a matter of course, that 
 he cannot make allowance for the benighted dark- 
 ness of the learner. 
 
 " Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. 
 You see, it's quite simple," said Mr. Cleghorn, the 
 arithmetic master. 
 
 "Oh, thank you; I see" said Margaret, with 
 the kind readiness of woman, who would pro- 
 fess to " see " the Secret of Hegel, or the inmost 
 heart of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of 
 the duties of cover-point, or the latest hypothesis 
 about the frieze of the Parthenon, rather than be 
 troubled with prolonged explanations, which the ex- 
 positor, after all, might find it inconvenient to give. 
 
 Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar's 
 forte ; and no young lady in Miss Marlett's estab- 
 lishment was so hungry, or so glad when eight 
 o'clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as 
 Margaret Shields. 
 
 Breakfast at Miss Marlett's was not a convivial 
 meal. There was a long narrow table, with cross- 
 tables at each end, these high seats, or dais, being 
 occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. 
 At intervals down the table were stacked huge 
 piles of bread and butter, — of extremely thick 
 bread and surprisingly thin butter, — each slice 
 being divided into four portions. The rest of the 
 banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether this 
 regimen was enough to support growing girls, 
 who had risen at seven, till dinner-time at half- 
 past one, is a problem which, perhaps, the 
 inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely ap- 
 proach with confidence. But, if girls do not 
 
 4
 
 46 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 always learn as much at school as could be 
 desired, intellectually speaking, it is certain that 
 they have every chance of acquiring Spartan 
 habits, and of becoming accustomed (if familiarity 
 really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and 
 cold. Not that Miss Marlett's establishment was 
 a Do-the-girls Hall, nor a school much more scantily 
 equipped with luxuries than others. But the 
 human race has still to learn that girls need 
 good meals just as much as, or more than, 
 persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off 
 at many places ; but boys have opportunities of 
 adding bloaters and chops to their breakfasts, 
 which would be considered horribly indelicate 
 and insubordinate conduct in girls. 
 
 "Est ce que vous aimez les tartines a l'Ang- 
 laise," said Janey Harman to Margaret. 
 
 " Ce que j'aime dans la tartine, c'est la sim- 
 plicity primesautiere de sa nature," answered Miss 
 Shields. 
 
 It was one of the charms of the " matinal 
 meal " (as the author of Guy Livingstone calls 
 breakfast) that the young ladies were all com- 
 pelled to talk French (and such French!) during 
 this period of refreshment. 
 
 " Toutes choses, la cuisine exceptee, sont Fran- 
 caises, dans cet etablissement peu recreatif," went 
 on Janey, speaking low and fast. 
 
 "Je deteste le Frangais," Margaret answered, 
 " mais je le prefere infiniment a l'Allemand." 
 
 " Comment accentuez, vous le mot prefere, Mar- 
 guerite ? " asked Miss Marlett, who had heard the 
 word, and who neglected no chance of conveying 
 instruction. 
 
 " Oh, two accents — one this way, and the other 
 that," answered Margaret, caught unawares. She 
 certainly did not reply in the most correct ter- 
 minology.
 
 THE MARK OF CATN. 
 
 47 
 
 "Vous allez perdre dix marks," remarked the 
 schoolmistress, if incorrectly, perhaps not too 
 severely. But perhaps it is not easy to say, off- 
 hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have 
 employed for " marks." 
 
 " Voici les lettres qui arrivent," whispered Janey 
 to Margaret, as the post-bag was brought in and 
 deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it with 
 a key and withdrew the contents. 
 
 This was a trying moment for the young ladies. 
 Miss Marlett first sorted out all the letters for the 
 girls, which came, indubitably and unmistakably, 
 from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out 
 the other letters, those directed to young ladies 
 whom she thought she could trust, and handed 
 them over in honourable silence. These maidens 
 were regarded with envy by the others. Among 
 them was not Miss Harman, whose letters Miss 
 Marlett always deliberately opened and read 
 before delivering them. 
 
 " II y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire," 
 said poor Janey to her friend, who, for her part, 
 never received any letters, save a few, at stated 
 intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields 
 used to carry about in her pocket without opening 
 them, till they were all crumply at the edges. 
 Then she hastily mastered their contents, and 
 made answer in the briefest and most decorous 
 manner. 
 
 " Qui est votre correspondent ? " Margaret asked. 
 We are not defending her French. 
 
 " C'est le pauvre Harry Wyville," answered 
 Janey. "II est sous -lieutenant dans les Berk- 
 shires, a Aldershot. Pourquoi ne doit il pas ecrire 
 a moi, il est comme on diroit, mon frere." 
 
 " Est il votre parent ? " 
 
 " Non, pas du tout, mais je l'ai connu pour des 
 ans. Oh, pour des ans ! Voici, elle a deux de- 
 
 4 * .
 
 48 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 peches telegraphiques," Janey added, observing 
 two orange-coloured envelopes which had come in 
 the mail-bag with the letters. 
 
 At this moment Miss Marlett finished the fra- 
 ternal epistle of Lieutenant Wyville, which she 
 folded up with a frown and returned to the 
 envelope. 
 
 " Jeanne, je veux vous parler a part, apres, dans 
 mon boudoir," remarked Miss Marlett severely; 
 and Miss Harman, becoming a little blanched, 
 displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for 
 French conversation. 
 
 Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, 
 read letters written to one by a lieutenant at 
 Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and 
 who is just like one's brother, is a trial to any girl. 
 
 Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own 
 correspondence, which, as Janey had noticed, 
 included two telegraphic despatches in orange- 
 coloured envelopes. 
 
 That she had not rushed at these, and opened 
 them first, proves the admirable rigidity of her 
 discipline. Any other woman would have done 
 so, but it was Miss Marlett's rule to dispose of 
 the pupils' correspondence before attending to her 
 own. "Business first, pleasure afterwards," was 
 the motto of this admirable woman. 
 
 Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the 
 room for the tasks of the day, Miss Marlett 
 beckoned Margaret aside. 
 
 " Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey 
 Harman," said the schoolmistress in English, and 
 in a tone to which Margaret was so unaccustomed 
 that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious, un- 
 wonted moods for this careless maiden. 
 
 "Janey, something must have happened," she 
 whispered to her friend, who was hardening her 
 own heart for the dreadful interview.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 49 
 
 "Something's going to happen, I'm sure," said 
 poor Janey, apprehensively, and then she entered 
 the august presence, alone. 
 
 Margaret remained at the further end of the 
 passage, leading to what Miss Marlett, when she 
 spoke French, called her " boudoir." The girl 
 felt colder than even the weather warranted. She 
 looked 'alternately at Miss Marlett's door and out 
 of the window, across the dead blank flats to the 
 low white hills far away. Just under the window 
 one of the little girls was standing, throwing 
 crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins and 
 sparrows, which chattered and fought over the 
 spoil. One or two blackbirds, with their yellow 
 bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of the ring of 
 more familiar birds. Up from the south a miser- 
 able blue-grey haze was drifting and shuddering, 
 ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and the 
 branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, 
 making round black holes in the snow, and mixing 
 and melting here and there in a yellowish plash. 
 
 Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir 
 door open, and Janey came out, making a plucky 
 attempt not to cry. 
 
 "What is it?" whispered Margaret, forgetting 
 the dread interview before her, and her own 
 unformed misgivings. 
 
 " She won't give me the letter. I 'm to have it 
 when I go home for good ; and I 'm to go home 
 for good at the holidays," whimpered Janey. 
 
 "Poor Janey!" said Margaret, petting the 
 blonde head on her shoulder. 
 
 "Margaret Shields, come here!" cried Miss 
 Marlett, in a shaky voice, from the boudoir. 
 
 "Come to the back music -room when she's 
 done with you," the other girl whispered. And 
 Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into 
 Miss Marlett's chamber.
 
 50 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " My dear Margaret ! " said Miss Marlett, hold- 
 ing out her hands. She was standing up in the 
 middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been 
 sitting grimly, fortified behind her bureau : that 
 was the position in which she generally received 
 pupils on these gloomy occasions. 
 
 " My dear Margaret !" she repeated. The girl 
 trembled a little as the schoolmistress drew her 
 closer, and made her sit down on a sofa. 
 
 "What has happened?" she asked. Her lips 
 were so dry that she could scarcely speak. 
 
 " You must make up your mind to be very 
 brave. Your father " 
 
 "Was it an accident?" asked Margaret, sud- 
 denly. She knew pretty well what was coming. 
 Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed 
 no prophet to foretell. " Was it anything very 
 dreadful?" 
 
 " Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be 
 called for to-day. Poor Daisy ! " 
 
 "Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!" 
 the girl sobbed. Somehow, she was kneeling now, 
 with her head buried in the elder lady's lap. 
 " I have been horrid to you. I am so wretched! " 
 
 A little kindness and a sudden trouble had 
 broken down Miss Margaret Shields. For years 
 she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college, 
 with a sad and hungry heart, trying to " carry it 
 off by her wild talk and her wit." " It was bit- 
 terness they mistook for frolic." She had known 
 herself to be a kind of outcast, and she deter- 
 mined to hold her own with the other girls, who 
 had homes, and went to them in the holidays. 
 Margaret had not gone home for a year. She had 
 learned much, working harder than they knew; 
 she had been in "the best set " among the pupils, 
 by dint of her cheery rebelliousness. Now she 
 suddenly felt all her loneliness, and knew, too, that
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 5I 
 
 she had been living, socially, in that little society 
 at the expense of this kind queer old Miss Mar- 
 lett's feelings. 
 
 " I have been horrid to you," she repeated. 
 " I wish I had never been born." 
 
 The schoolmistress said nothing at all, but kept 
 stroking the girl's beautiful head. Surreptitiously 
 Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear. 
 
 "Don't mind me," at last Miss Marlett said. 
 "I never thought hardly of you: I understood. 
 Now you must go and get ready for your journey ; 
 you can have any of the girls you like to help you 
 to pack." 
 
 Miss Marlett carried generosity so far, that she 
 did not even ask which of the girls was to be 
 chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that 
 it was the ether culprit. 
 
 Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and 
 Miss Marlett took her in her arms and kissed her, 
 and went off to order a travelling luncheon and 
 to select the warmest railway rug she could find ; 
 for the teacher, though she was not a very learned 
 nor judicious schoolmistress, had a heart and affec- 
 tions of her own. She had once, it is true, taken 
 the word legibus (dative plural of lex, a law) for an 
 adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, 
 legibum ; and Margaret had criticised this gram- 
 matical subtlety with as unsparing philological 
 acumen as if she had been Prof. Moritz Haupt, 
 and Miss Marlett, — Orelli. And this had led to the 
 end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore 
 Margaret was honoured as a goddess by girls 
 averse to studying the classic languages. But 
 now Miss Marlett forgot these things, and all 
 the other skirmishes of the past. 
 
 Margaret went wearily to her room, where she 
 bathed her face with cold water : it could not be 
 too cold for her. A certain numb forgetfulness
 
 52 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 seemed to steep her mind while she was thus 
 deadening her eyes again and again. She felt as 
 if she never wished to raise her eyes from this 
 chilling consolation. Then, when she thought 
 she had got rid of all the traces of her trouble, 
 she went cautiously to the back music -room. 
 Janey was there, moping alone, drumming on the 
 window-pane with her fingers. 
 
 " Come to my room, Janey," she said, beckoning. 
 
 Now to consort together in their bedrooms dur- 
 ing school hours was forbidden to the girls. 
 
 " Why, we '11 only get into another scrape," said 
 Janey ruefully. 
 
 "No, come away; I've got leave for you. You're 
 to help me to pack." 
 
 "To pack!" cried Janey. " Why, you 're not 
 expelled, are you? You've done nothing. You've 
 not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy 
 who is just like a brother to you and whom you've 
 known for years." 
 
 Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, 
 Janey following in silence and intense curiosity. 
 
 When they reached their room, where Margaret's 
 portmanteau had already been placed, the girl be- 
 gan to put up such things as she would need for 
 a short journey. She said nothing till she had 
 finished, and then she sat down on a bed and told 
 Janey what she had learned ; and the pair " had a 
 good cry," and comforted each other as well as 
 they might. 
 
 "And what are you going to do ?" asked Janey, 
 when, as Homer says, " they had taken their fill 
 of chilling lamentations." 
 
 "I don't know!" 
 
 " Have you no one else in all the world ? " 
 
 " No one at all. My mother died when I was 
 a little child, in Smyrna. Since then we have 
 wandered all about : we were a long time in
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 53 
 
 Algiers, and we were at Marseilles, and then in 
 London." 
 
 " But you have a guardian, haven't you ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he sent me here. And, of course, he 's 
 been very kind, and done everything for me ; but 
 he 's quite a young man, not thirty, and he 's so 
 stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about 
 Oxford, and talks so like a book. And he 's so 
 shy, and always seems to do everything, not be- 
 cause he likes it, but because he thinks he ought 
 to. And, besides " 
 
 But Margaret did not go further in her con- 
 fessions, nor explain more lucidly why she had 
 scant affection for Maitland of St. Gatien's. 
 
 " And had your poor father no other friends 
 who could take care of you ? " Janey asked. 
 
 " There was a gentleman who called now and 
 then : I saw him twice. He had been an officer 
 in father's ship, I think, or had known him long 
 ago at sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. 
 There was no one else at all." 
 
 "And you don't know any of your father's 
 family ? " 
 
 "No," said Margaret, wearily. "Oh, I have 
 forgotten to pack up my prayer-book." And she 
 took up a little worn volume in black morocco 
 with silver clasps. " This was a book my father 
 gave me," she said. " It has a name on it — my 
 grandfather's, I suppose, — ' Richard Johnson, 
 Linkheaton. 1837.' " Then she put the book in 
 a pocket of her travelling cloak. 
 
 "Your mother's father it may have belonged 
 to," said Janey. 
 
 " I don't know," Margaret replied, looking out 
 of the window. 
 
 " I hope you won't stay away long, dear," said 
 Janey affectionately. 
 
 " But you are going too, you know," Margaret
 
 54 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 answered, without much tact ; and Janey, reminded 
 of her private griefs, was about to break down, 
 when the wheels of a carriage were heard labour- 
 ing slowly up the snow-laden drive. 
 
 " Why, here 's some one coming ! " cried Janey, 
 rushing to the window. " Two horses ! and a 
 gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must 
 be for you ! " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 tflown. 
 
 AIT LAND'S reflections as, in 
 performance of the promise he had 
 telegraphed, he made his way to the 
 Dovecot were deep and distracted. 
 The newspapers with which he had 
 littered the railway carriage were left unread : he 
 had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men 
 are so made that they seldom hear even of a death 
 without immediately considering its effects on their 
 private interests. Now, the death of Richard Shields 
 affected Maitland's purposes both favourably and 
 unfavourably. He had for some time repented of 
 the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the girl was 
 concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For 
 some time he had been dimly aware of quite novel 
 emotions in his own heart, and of a new, rather 
 painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another 
 lady. Maitland, in fact, was becoming more 
 human than he gave himself credit for, and a sign 
 of his awakening nature was the blush with which 
 he had greeted, some weeks before, Barton's casual 
 criticism on Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 55 
 
 Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland 
 had felt that his philanthropic entanglement — it 
 was rather, he said to himself, an entanglement 
 than an engagement — had become irksome to his 
 fancy. Now that the unfortunate parent was out 
 of the way, he felt that the daughter would not be 
 more sorry than himself to revise the relations in 
 which they stood to each other. Vanity might 
 have prevented some men from seeing this ; but 
 Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy 
 conceit. A curious "aloofness" of nature per- 
 mitted him to stand aside, and see himself much 
 as a young lady was likely to see him. This 
 disposition is rare, and not a source of happiness. 
 
 On the other hand, his future relations to Mar- 
 garet formed a puzzle inextricable. He could not 
 at all imagine how he was to dispose of so em- 
 barrassing a. protegee. Margaret was becoming too 
 much of a woman to be left much longer at 
 school ; and where was she to be disposed of ? 
 
 " I might send her to Girton," he thought ; 
 and then, characteristically, he began to weigh in 
 his mind the comparative educational merits of 
 Girton and Somerville Hall. About one thing 
 only was he certain : he must consult his college 
 mentor, Bielby of St. Gatien's, as soon as might 
 be. Too long had this Rasselas — occupied, like 
 the famous Prince of Abyssinia, with the choice of 
 life — neglected to resort to his academic Imlac. 
 In the meantime he could only reflect that Mar- 
 garet must remain as a pupil at Miss Marlett's. 
 The moment would soon be arriving when some 
 other home, and a chaperon instead of a school- 
 mistress, must be found for this peculiar object 
 of philanthropy and outdoor relief. 
 
 Maitland was sorry he had not left town by the 
 nine o'clock train. The early dusk began to 
 gather, grey and damp ; the train was late, having
 
 5^ THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 made tardy progress through the half- melted 
 snow. He had set out from Paddington by the 
 half-past ten express, and a glance at the harsh 
 and crabbed page of Bradshaw will prove to the 
 most sceptical that Maitland could not reach 
 Tiverton much before six. Half frozen, and in 
 anything but a happy temper, he engaged a fly, 
 and drove off, along heavy miserable roads, to the 
 Dovecot. 
 
 Arriving at the closed and barred gates of that 
 vestal establishment, Maitland's cabman " pulled, 
 and pushed, and kicked, and knocked " for a con- 
 siderable time, without manifest effect. Clearly 
 the retainers of Miss Marlett had secured the 
 position for the night, and expected no visitors, 
 though Maitland knew that he ought to be ex- 
 pected. " The bandogs bayed and howled," as 
 they did round the secret bower of the Lady of 
 Branksome ; and lights flitted about the windows. 
 When a lantern at last came flickering up to the 
 gate, the bearer of it stopped to challenge an 
 apparently unlooked-for and unwelcome stranger. 
 
 " Who are you ? What do you want ? " said a 
 female voice, in a strong Devonian accent. 
 
 " I want Miss Marlett," answered Maitland. 
 
 There was some hesitation. Then the porter 
 appeared to reflect that a burglar would not arrive 
 in a cab, and that a surreptitious lover would not 
 ask for the schoolmistress. 
 
 The portals were at length unbarred and lugged 
 apart over the gravel, and Maitland followed the 
 cook (for she was no one less) and the candle up 
 to the front door. He gave his card, and was 
 ushered into the chamber reserved for interviews 
 with parents and guardians. The drawing-room 
 had the air and faint smell of a room very seldom 
 occupied. All the chairs were so elegantly and 
 cunningly constructed that they tilted up at inter-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 57 
 
 vals, and threw out the unwary male who trusted 
 himself to their hospitality. Their backs were 
 decorated with antimacassars wrought with glass 
 beads, and these, in the light of one dip, shone 
 fitfully with a frosty lustre. On the round table 
 in the middle were volumes of The Mothers of 
 England, The Grandmothers of the Bible, Blair On the 
 Grave, and The Epic of Hades, the latter copiously 
 and appropriately illustrated. In addition to these 
 cheerful volumes there were large tomes of lake 
 and river scenery, with gilt edges and faded 
 magenta bindings, shrouded from the garish light 
 of day in drab paper covers. 
 
 The walls, of a very faint lilac tint, were hung 
 with prize sketches, in water colours or in pencil, 
 by young ladies who had left. In the former works 
 of art, distant nature was represented as, on the 
 whole, of a mauve hue, while the foreground was 
 mainly composed of burnt-umber rocks, touched 
 up with orange. The shadows in the pencil 
 drawings had an agreeably brilliant polish, like 
 that which, when conferred on fenders by Some- 
 body's Patent Dome Blacklead, " increases the 
 attractions of the fireside," according to the 
 advertisements. Maitland knew all the blacklead 
 caves, broad-hatted brigands, and pea-green trees. 
 They were old acquaintances, and as he fidgeted 
 about the room he became very impatient. 
 
 At last the door opened, and Miss Marlett ap- 
 peared, rustling in silks, very stiff, and with an air 
 of extreme astonishment. 
 
 "Mr. Maitland?" she said, in an interrogative 
 tone. 
 
 " Didn't you expect me ? Didn't you get my 
 telegram?" asked Maitland. 
 
 It occurred to him that the storm might have 
 injured the wires, that his message might never 
 have arrived, and that he might be obliged to
 
 58 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 explain everything, and break his bad news in 
 person. 
 
 " Yes, certainly. I got both your telegrams. 
 But why have you come here?" 
 
 " Why, to see Margaret Shields, of course, and 
 consult you about her. But what do you mean 
 by both my telegrams ? " 
 
 Miss Marlett turned very pale, and sat down 
 with unexpected suddenness. 
 
 " Oh, what will become of the poor girl?" she 
 cried, " and what will become of me ? It will get 
 talked about. The parents will hear of it, and 
 I am ruined." 
 
 The unfortunate lady passed her handkerchief 
 over her eyes, to the extreme discomfiture of 
 Maitland. He could not bear to see a woman 
 cry; and that Miss Marlett should cry — Miss 
 Marlett, the least melting, as he had fancied, of 
 her sex — was a circumstance which entirely 
 puzzled and greatly disconcerted him. 
 
 He remained silent, looking at a flower in the 
 pattern of the carpet, for at least a minute. 
 
 " I came here to consult you, Miss Marlett, 
 about what is to become of the poor girl ; but I do 
 not see how the parents of the other young ladies 
 are concerned. Death is common to all ; and 
 Margaret's father, though his life was exposed to 
 criticism, cannot be fairly censured because he 
 has left it. And what do you mean, please, by 
 receiving both my telegrams ? I only sent one, to 
 the effect that I would leave town by the 10.30 
 train, and come straight to you. There must 
 be some mistake somewhere. Can I see Miss 
 Shields?" 
 
 "See Miss Shields! Why, she's gone ! She 
 left this morning with your friend," said Miss 
 Marlett, raising a face at once mournful and 
 alarmed, and looking straight at her visitor.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 5g 
 
 " She 's gone ! She left this morning with my 
 friend ! " repeated Maitland. He felt like a man 
 in a dream. 
 
 "You said in your first telegram that you 
 would come for her yourself, and in your second 
 that you were detained, and that your friend and 
 her father's friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for 
 her by the early train ; so she went with him." 
 
 " My friend, Mr. Lithgow ! I have no friend, 
 Mr. Lithgow," cried Maitland; "and I sent no 
 second telegram." 
 
 " Then who did send it, sir, if you please ? For 
 I will show you both telegrams," cried Miss 
 Marlett, now on her defence ; and rising, she left 
 the room. 
 
 While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of 
 the telegrams, Maitland had time to reflect on the 
 unaccountable change in the situation. What had 
 become of" Margaret ? Who had any conceivable 
 interest in removing her from school at the very 
 moment of her father's accidental death ? And 
 by what possible circumstances of accident or 
 fraud could two messages from himself have 
 arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent 
 one ? The records of somnambulism contain no 
 story of a person who despatched telegrams while 
 walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred 
 to Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote 
 it, might have been mislaid in the office, and that 
 the imaginative clerk who lost it might have filled 
 it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the 
 poem, might 
 
 " Have wrote it all by rote, 
 And never wrote it right." 
 
 But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis 
 was dispersed by the recollection that Margaret 
 had actually departed, and (what was worse) had 
 gone off with " his friend, Mr. Lithgow." Clearly,
 
 60 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 no amount of accident or mistake would account 
 for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and the dis- 
 appearance of Margaret. 
 
 It was characteristic of Maitland that within 
 himself he did not greatly blame the schoolmistress. 
 He had so little human nature — as he admitted, 
 on the evidence of his old college tutor — that he 
 was never able to see things absolutely and entirely 
 from the point of view of his own interests. His 
 own personality was not elevated enough to com- 
 mand the whole field of human conduct. He was 
 always making allowances for people, and never 
 felt able to believe himself absolutely in the right, 
 and everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had 
 he owned a more full-blooded life, he would 
 probably have lost his temper, and "spoken his 
 mind," as the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett. 
 She certainly should never have let Margaret go 
 with a stranger, on the authority even of a tele- 
 gram from the girl's guardian. 
 
 It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett 
 was very slow about finding the despatches. She 
 had been absent quite a quarter of an hour. At 
 last she returned, pale and trembling, with a tele- 
 graphic despatch in her hand, but not alone. She 
 was accompanied by a blonde and agitated young 
 lady, in whom Maitland, having seen her before, 
 might have recognised Miss Janey Harman. But 
 he had no memory for faces, and merely bowed 
 vaguely. 
 
 " This is Miss Harman, whom I think you have 
 seen on other occasions," said Miss Marlett, trying 
 to be calm. 
 
 Maitland bowed again, and wondered more than 
 ever. It did occur to him, that the fewer people 
 knew of so delicate a business the better for 
 Margaret's sake. 
 
 " I have brought Miss Harman here, Mr. Mait-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 6l 
 
 land, partly because she is Miss Shields' greatest 
 friend " (here Janey sobbed), " but chiefly because 
 she can prove, to a certain extent, the truth of 
 what I have told you." 
 
 " I never for a moment doubted it, Miss Mar- 
 lett ; but will you kindly let me compare the two 
 telegrams ? This is a most extraordinary affair, 
 and we ought to lose no time in investigating it, 
 and discovering its meaning. You and I are re- 
 sponsible, you know, to ourselves, if unfortunately 
 to no one else, for Margaret's safety." 
 
 " But I haven't got the two telegrams ! " ex- 
 claimed poor Miss Marlett, who could not live up 
 to the stately tone of Maitland. " I haven't got 
 them, or rather, I only have one of them, and I 
 have hunted everywhere, high and low, for the 
 other." 
 
 Then she offered Maitland a single despatch, 
 and the flimsy pink paper fluttered in her shaking 
 hand. 
 
 Maitland took it up and read aloud : 
 
 " Sent out at 7.45. Received 7.51. 
 
 " From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett. 
 
 " The Dovecot, Conisbeare, 
 
 " Tiverton. 
 " I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do not 
 let Margaret see the newspaper. Her father dead. 
 Break news." 
 
 " Why, that is my own telegram ! " cried Mait- 
 land ; " but what have you done with the other 
 you said you received ? " 
 
 " That is the very one I cannot find, though I 
 had both on the escritoire in my own room this 
 morning. I cannot believe any one would touch 
 it. I did not lock them away, not expecting to 
 have any use for them ; but I am quite sure, the 
 last time I saw them, they were lying there." 
 
 5
 
 62 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " This is very extraordinary," said Maitland. 
 " You tell me, Miss Marlett, that you received 
 two telegrams from me. On the strength of the 
 later of the two you let your pupil go away with 
 a person of whom you know nothing, and then 
 you have not even the telegram to show me. How 
 long an interval was there between the receipt of 
 the two despatches ? " 
 
 " I got them both at once," said poor trembling 
 Miss Marlett, who felt the weakness of her case. 
 " They were both sent up with the letters this 
 morning. Were they not, Miss Harman ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Janey; "I certainly saw two tele- 
 graphic envelopes lying among your letters at 
 breakfast. I mentioned it to — to poor Margaret," 
 she added, with a break in her voice. 
 
 " But why were the telegrams not delivered last 
 night ? " Maitland asked. 
 
 " I have left orders," Miss Marlett answered, 
 "that only telegrams of instant importance are to 
 be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings, and 
 parents and people are so tiresome, always tele- 
 : Lphing about nothing in particular, and costing 
 i t ne. These telegrams were very important, of 
 course ; but nothing more could have been done 
 about them if they had arrived last night, than if 
 they came this morning. I have had a great deal 
 of annoyance and expense," the schoolmistress 
 added, "with telegrams that had to be paid for." 
 
 And here most people who live at a distance from 
 telegraph offices, and are afflicted with careless 
 friends whose touch on the wire is easy and light, 
 will perhaps sympathise with Miss Marlett. 
 
 " You might at least have telegraphed back to 
 ask me to confirm the instructions, when you read 
 the second despatch," said Maitland. 
 
 He was beginning to take an argumentative 
 interest in the strength of his own case. It was
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 63 
 
 certainly very strong, and the excuse for the 
 schoolmistress was weak in proportion. 
 
 " But that would have been of no use, as it 
 happens," Janey put in, — an unexpected and wel- 
 come ally to Miss Marlett, — "because you must 
 have left Paddington long before the question 
 could have reached you." 
 
 This was unanswerable, as a matter of fact ; 
 and Miss Marlett could not repress a grateful glance 
 in the direction of her wayward pupil. 
 
 " Well," said Maitland, "it is all very provoking, 
 and very serious. Can you remember at all how 
 the second message ran, Miss Marlett ? " 
 
 " Indeed, I know it off by heart ; it was directed 
 exactly like that in your hand, and was dated 
 half an hour later. It ran : ' Plans altered. Mar- 
 garet required in town. My friend and her father's, 
 Mr. Lithgow, will call for her soon after mid-day.' 
 I noticed there were just twenty words." 
 
 " And did you also notice the office from which 
 the message was sent out ? " 
 
 " No," said Miss Marlett, shaking her head with 
 an effort at recollection. " I am afraid I did not 
 notice." 
 
 " That is very unfortunate," said Maitland, walk- 
 ing vaguely up and down the room. " Do you 
 think the telegram is absolutely lost ? " 
 
 " I have looked everywhere, and asked all the 
 maids." 
 
 " When did you see it last, for certain ? " 
 
 " I laid both despatches on the desk in my room 
 when I went out to make sure that Margaret had 
 everything comfortable before she started." 
 
 " And where was this Mr. Lithgow then ? " 
 
 " He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying 
 to warm himself; he seemed very cold." 
 
 " Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in posses- 
 sion of the telegram, which he probably, or rather 
 
 5* 
 
 /
 
 64 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know 
 anything about the girl, or what possible motive 
 he can have had " muttered Maitland to him- 
 self. " She has never been in any place, Miss 
 Marlett, since she came to you, where she could 
 have made the man's acquaintance? " 
 
 " It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, 
 and how they may manage it, Mr. Maitland," said 
 Miss Marlett sadly ; when Janey broke in : 
 
 " I 'm sure Margaret never met him here. She 
 was not a girl to have such a secret, and she could 
 not have acted a part so as to have taken me in. 
 I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret 
 was very unhappy ; she had been crying. I said 
 ' Here 's a gentleman in furs, Margaret ; he must 
 have come for you.' Then she looked out and 
 said, ' It is not my guardian ; it is the gentleman 
 whom I saw twice with my father.' " 
 
 " What kind of a man was he to look at ? " 
 
 " He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, 
 with a slight black moustache. He had a fur collar 
 that went up to his eyes almost, and he was not a 
 young man. He was a gentleman," said Janey, 
 who flattered herself that she recognised such 
 persons as bear without reproach that grand old 
 name — when she saw them. 
 
 " Would you know him again if you met him ? " 
 
 "Anywhere," said Janey, "and I would know 
 his voice." 
 
 " He wore mourning," said Miss Marlett, " and 
 he told me he had known Margaret's father. I 
 heard him say a few w r ords to her, in a very kind 
 way, about him. That seemed more comfort to 
 Margaret than anything. ' He did not suffer at 
 all, my dear,' he said. He spoke to her in that 
 way, as an older man might."" 
 
 "Why, how on earth could he know?" cried 
 Maitland. " No one was present when her poor
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 65 
 
 father died. His body was found in a ," and 
 
 Maitland paused rather awkwardly. There was, 
 perhaps, no necessity for adding to the public 
 information about the circumstances of Mr. 
 Shields' decease. " He was overcome by the 
 cold and snow, I mean, on the night of the great 
 storm." 
 
 " I have always heard that the death of people 
 made drowsy by snow and fatigue is as painless 
 as sleep," said Miss Marlett with some tact. 
 
 " I suppose that is what the man must have 
 meant," Maitland answered. 
 
 There was nothing more to be said on either 
 side, and yet he lingered, trying to think over any 
 circumstance which might lend a clue in the search 
 for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow. 
 
 At last he said " Good-night," after making the 
 superfluous remark that it would be as well to let 
 everyone suppose that nothing unusual or unex- 
 pected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett 
 entirely concurred, for excellent reasons of her 
 own, and now she began to regret that she had 
 taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there 
 was no help for it ; and when Maitland rejoined 
 his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea), a 
 kind of informal treaty of peace was concluded 
 between Janey and the schoolmistress. After all, 
 it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly) that 
 the epistle from the young officer whom Janey 
 regarded as a brother was a natural and harmless 
 communication. It chiefly contained accounts of 
 contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in 
 which the writer had distinguished himself; and 
 if it did end " Yours affectionately," there was 
 nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all 
 things considered. So the fair owner of the letter 
 received it into her own keeping, only she was 
 " never to do it again."
 
 66 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing 
 about Margaret's inexplicable adventure. She 
 believed that the girl would have sufficient sense 
 and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she 
 did not do so of her own accord, no vows would 
 be likely to bind her. In this favourable esti- 
 mate of her pupil's discretion Miss Marlett was 
 not mistaken. Janey did not even give herself 
 airs of mystery among the girls, which was 
 an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of 
 the school never doubted that, on the death of 
 Miss Shields' father, she had been removed by 
 one of her friends. As for Maitland, he was com- 
 pelled to pass the night at Tiverton, revolving 
 many memories. He had now the gravest reason 
 for anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the 
 only friend and protector, and who was, unde- 
 niably, the victim of some plot or conspiracy. 
 Nothing more practical than seeking the advice 
 of Bielby of St. Gatien's occurred to his per- 
 plexed imagination. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 m St. (Batten's. 
 
 HE following day was spent by Mait- 
 land in travel, and in pushing such 
 inquiries as suggested themselves to a 
 mind not fertile in expedients. He was 
 not wholly unacquainted with novels 
 of adventure, and he based his conduct, as much 
 as possible, on what he could remember in these 
 " authorities." For example, he first went in 
 search of the man who had driven the cab which
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 67 
 
 brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter 
 the Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One 
 of the cabdrivers who plied at the station perfectly 
 remembered the gentleman in furs whom he had 
 driven to the school. After waiting at the school 
 till the young lady was ready, he had conveyed 
 them back again to the station, and they took the 
 up train. That was all he knew. The gentleman, 
 if his opinion were asked, was " a scaly varmint." 
 On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide moral 
 generalisation was based on the limited ponr-boire 
 which Mr. Lithgow had presented to his chariot- 
 eer. Had the gentleman any luggage ? Yes, he 
 had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak- 
 room, and took away with him on his return to 
 town — not in the van, in the railway carriage. 
 " What could he want with all that luggage ? " 
 Maitland wondered. 
 
 The next thing was, of course, to find the guard 
 of the train which conveyed Margaret and her 
 mysterious friend to Taunton. This official had 
 seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at 
 Taunton. They went on to London. 
 
 The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields 
 was now obliged to start for Taunton, and thence 
 pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as Pad- 
 dington. The position was extremely irksome to 
 Maitland. Although, in novels, gentlemen often 
 assume the role of the detective with apparent 
 relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the 
 part. He was too scrupulous and too shy. He 
 detested asking guards, and porters, and station- 
 masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they 
 remembered having seen, yesterday, a gentle- 
 man in a fur coat travelling with a young lady, 
 of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too 
 suggestive description. The philanthropist could 
 not but see that every one promptly constructed,
 
 68 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account 
 for all the circumstances — a myth in which Mait- 
 land played the unpopular part of the Avenging 
 Brother or Injured Husband. 
 
 What other path, indeed, was open to conjec- 
 ture ? A gentleman in a fur coat, and a young 
 lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling 
 alone together, one day, in a carriage marked 
 " Engaged." Next day, another gentleman (not 
 prepossessing and very nervous) appears on the 
 same route, asking anxious questions about the 
 wayfarer in the notable coat (bearskin, it seemed 
 to have been) and about the interesting young 
 lady. Clearly, the pair were the fond fugitives 
 of Love ; while the pursuer represented the less 
 engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of 
 the Family. All the romance and all the popular 
 interest were manifestly on the other side, not on 
 Maitland's side. Even his tips were received 
 without enthusiasm. 
 
 Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly ; and 
 yet he had neither the time nor the power to 
 explain matters. Even if he had told every one 
 he met that he was really the young lady's guardian, 
 and that the gentleman in the fur coat was (he 
 had every reason to believe) a forger and a mis- 
 creant, he would not have been believed. His 
 opinion would, not unjustly, have been looked 
 on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 calls " the personal bias." He had therefore to 
 put up with general distrust and brief discourteous 
 replies. 
 
 There are many young ladies in the refreshment- 
 bar at Swindon. There they gather, numerous 
 and fair as the sea-nymphs — Doto, Proto, Doris 
 and Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them 
 Maitland sought to be instructed. But the young 
 ladies were arch and uncommunicative, pretend-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 69 
 
 ing that their attention was engaged in their 
 hospitable duties. Soup it was their business to 
 minister to travellers, not private information. 
 They had seen the gentleman and lady. Very 
 attentive to her he seemed. Yes, they were on 
 the best terms; "very sweet on each other," one 
 young lady averred, and then secured her retreat 
 and concealed her blushes by ministering to the 
 wants of a hungry and hurried public. All this 
 was horribly disagreeable to Maitland. 
 
 Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking 
 questions. He had telegraphed the night before 
 to inquire whether two persons answering to the 
 oft-repeated description had been noticed at the 
 terminus. He had received a reply in the negative 
 before leaving Tiverton. Here, then, was a check. 
 If the ticket - collector was to be credited, the 
 objects of his search had reached Westbourne 
 Park, where their tickets had been taken. There, 
 however, all the evidence proved that they had 
 not descended. Nobody had seen them alight. 
 Yet, not a trace was to be found at Paddington of 
 a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman 
 travelling alone with a young lady. 
 
 It was nearly nine o'clock when Maitland, puz- 
 zled, worn out, and disgusted, arrived in town. 
 He did what he could in the way of interrogating 
 the porters, — all to no purpose. In the crowd 
 and bustle of passengers, who skirmish for their 
 luggage under inadequate lights, no one remem- 
 bered having seen either of the persons whom 
 Maitland described. There remained the chance 
 of finding out and cross-examining all the cab- 
 drivers who had taken up passengers by the late 
 trains the night before. But that business could 
 not be transacted at the moment, nor perhaps by 
 an amateur. 
 
 Maitland's time was limited indeed. He had been
 
 JO THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 obliged to get out at Westbourne Park and prose- 
 cute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to 
 Paddington, and, with brief enough space for in- 
 vestigations that yielded nothing, he took his ticket 
 by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His whole 
 soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien's, 
 whom, in his heart, Maitland could not but accuse 
 of being at the bottom of all these unprecedented 
 troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it 
 were, out of Oxford, by urging him to acquire a 
 wider knowledge of humanity, and to expand his 
 character by intercourse with every variety of our 
 fallen species, Maitland felt that he might now be 
 vegetating in an existence peaceful, if not well 
 satisfied. "Adventures are to the adventurous." 
 It is a hard thing when they have to be achieved 
 by a champion who is not adventurous at all. If 
 he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby 's, 
 Maitland told himself, he never would have plunged 
 into philanthropic enterprise, he never would have 
 taken the Hit or Miss, he never would have been 
 entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and 
 he would not now be concerned with the death, in 
 the snow, of a dissipated old wanderer, nor obliged 
 to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped schoolgirl. 
 Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing 
 anxiety of speculating on what had befallen 
 Margaret. 
 
 His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plau- 
 sible solutions of the mystery of her disappear- 
 ance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland's 
 confidence in the sagacity of his old tutor was 
 unshaken. Bielby had not been responsible for 
 the details of the methods by which his pupil was 
 trying to expand his character. Lastly, he re- 
 flected that if he had not taken Bielby's advice, 
 and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. Ji 
 
 So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like 
 the telegraph posts, in the dark, and Maitland 
 reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped 
 into a hansom, and said, " Gatien's." Past Wor- 
 cester, up Carfax, down the High Street, they 
 struggled through the snow; and at last Mait- 
 land got out and kicked at the College gate. The 
 porter (it was nearly midnight) opened it with 
 rather a scared face : 
 
 " Horful row on in quad, sir," he said. " The 
 young gentlemen 'as a bonfire on, and they 're 
 a larking with the snow. Orful A they 're a 
 making, sir." 
 
 The agricultural operation thus indicated by 
 the porter was being forwarded with great vigour. 
 A number of young men, in every variety of garb 
 (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically 
 piling up a huge Alp of snow against the door of 
 the Master's lodge. Meanwhile, another band had 
 carried into the quad all the light tables and cane 
 chairs from a lecture -room. Having arranged 
 these in a graceful pyramidal form, they intro- 
 duced some of the fire-lighters, called "devils" 
 by the College servants, and set a match to the 
 whole. 
 
 Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, 
 in the lurid glare, very like a magician who has 
 raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work 
 for them. He felt no disposition to interfere, 
 though the venerable mass of St. Gatien's seemed 
 in momentary peril, and the noise was enough to 
 waken the dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. 
 But Maitland was a non-resident Fellow, known 
 only to the undergraduates, where he was known 
 at all, as a " Radical," with any number of deco- 
 rative epithets, according to the taste and fancy 
 of the speaker. He did not think he could iden- 
 tify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that
 
 72 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 they would not carry him to his room, and there 
 screw him up, according to precedent. Maitland 
 had too much sense of personal dignity to face 
 the idea of owing his escape from his chambers 
 to the resources of civilisation at the command 
 of the college blacksmith. He therefore, after a 
 moment of irresolution, stole off under a low- 
 browed old doorway communicating with a queer 
 black many-sided little quadrangle ; for it is by no 
 means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this 
 least mathematical of universities, be quadran- 
 gular. Groping and stumbling his familiar way 
 up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed 
 his footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his 
 body, against the door at which he had meant to 
 knock. Over the door was painted, if anyone 
 could have seen it, the name of 
 
 MR. BIELBY. 
 
 " Come in," said a gruff voice, as if the knocking 
 had been done in the most conventional manner. 
 
 Maitland had come in by this time, and found 
 the distinguished Mr. Bielby, Fellow of St. 
 Gatien's, sitting by his fireside, attired in a grey 
 shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. 
 This gentleman had, on taking his degree, gone 
 to town, and practised with singular success at 
 the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust 
 or disappointment, he threw up his practice, re- 
 turned to College, and there lived a retired life 
 among his " brown Greek manuscripts." He was 
 a man of the world, turned hermit, and the first of 
 the kind whom Maitland had ever known. He 
 had " coached " Maitland, though he usually took 
 no pupils, and remained his friend and counsellor. 
 
 "How are you, Maitland?" said the student, 
 without rising. " I thought, from the way in 
 which you knocked, that you were some of the
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 73 
 
 young men, coming to ' draw me,' as I think they 
 call it." 
 
 Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that 
 the undergraduates were as likely to " draw " him 
 as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a 
 fierce old bear that " dwells among bones and 
 blood." 
 
 Mr. Bielby's own environment, to be sure, was 
 not of the grisly and mortuary character thus 
 energetically described by the poet. His pipe 
 was in his hand. His broad bald red face, ending 
 in an auburn spade-shaped beard, wore the air of 
 content. Around him were old books that had 
 belonged to famous students of old — Scaliger, 
 Meursius, Muretus, — and before him lay the proof- 
 sheets of his long -deferred work, a new critical 
 edition of Demetrius of Scepsis. 
 
 Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the 
 learned calm of a man who had not contrived, in 
 the task of developing his own human nature, to 
 become involved, like his pupil, in a singular and 
 deplorable conjuncture of circumstances. 
 
 "The men are making a terrible riot in quad," 
 he said, answering the other's remark. 
 
 " Yes, yes," replied Bielby genially ; " boys will 
 be boys, and so will young men. I believe our 
 Torpid has bumped Keble, and the event is being 
 celebrated." 
 
 Here there came a terrific howl from without, 
 and a crash of broken glass. 
 
 " There go some windows into their battels," 
 said Mr. Bielby. " They will hear of this from the 
 Provost. But what brings you here, Maitland, so 
 unexpectedly ? Very glad to see you, whatever 
 it is." 
 
 " Well, sir," said Maitland, " I rather want to 
 ask your advice on an important matter. The 
 fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long story,
 
 74 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged 
 to be married." 
 
 This was not a very ardent or lover-like an- 
 nouncement, but Bielby seemed gratified. 
 
 " Ah-ha," replied the tutor, with a humorous 
 twinkle. " Happy to hear it. Indeed, I had 
 heard a rumour, a whisper ! A little bird, as they 
 say, brought a hint of it, — Segto? opvts, I hope, 
 Maitland, a happy omen ! A pleasant woman of 
 the world, one who can take her own part in 
 Society, and your part too a little, — if you will 
 let me say so, — is exactly what you need. I con- 
 gratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to 
 see the young lady in Oxford ? Where is she just 
 now? " 
 
 Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed 
 heard something, and not the right thing. He 
 flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and 
 of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. 
 
 "I 'm sure I wish I knew," said Maitland at 
 last, beginning to find this consulting of the 
 oracle a little difficult. "The fact is, that's just 
 what I wanted to consult you about. I — I 'm 
 afraid I 've lost all trace of the young lady." 
 
 "Why, what do you mean?" asked the don, 
 his face suddenly growing grave, while his voice 
 had not yet lost its humorous tone. "She has not 
 eloped ? You don't mean to tell me she has run 
 away from you ? " 
 
 " I really don't know what to say," answered 
 Maitland. " I 'm afraid she has been run away 
 with, that she is the victim of some plot or con- 
 spiracy." 
 
 " You surely can't mean what you say " (and 
 now the voice was gruffer than ever). " People 
 don't plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they 
 did, which probably they didn't ! And who are 
 the young lady's people ? Why don't they look
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 75 
 
 after her ? I had heard she was a widow, but she 
 must have friends." 
 
 " She is not a widow — she is an orphan," said 
 Maitland, blushing painfully. " I am her guardian 
 in a kind of way." 
 
 " Why, the wrong stories have reached me alto- 
 gether ! I 'm sure I beg your pardon, but did you 
 tell me her name ? " 
 
 "Her name is Shields, Margaret Shields" — 
 (" Not the name I was told," muttered Bielby), — 
 " and her father was a man who had been rather 
 unsuccessful in life." 
 
 " What was his profession, what did he do ? " 
 
 " He had been a sailor, I think," said the 
 academic philanthropist ; " but when I knew him 
 he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he 
 was anything, a professional tattooer." 
 
 " What 's that ? " 
 
 " He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of 
 that class for a livelihood." 
 
 Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, 
 and no one who saw him could doubt that his 
 silence arose from a conscious want of words on 
 a level with the situation. 
 
 " Has Miss — h'm, Spears — Shields ? thank you : 
 has she been an orphan long ? " he asked at 
 length. He was clearly trying to hope that the 
 most undesirable prospective father-in-law de- 
 scribed by Maitland had long been removed from 
 the opportunity of forming his daughter's char- 
 acter. 
 
 " I only heard of his death yesterday," said 
 Maitland. 
 
 "Was it sudden?" 
 
 " Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather 
 irregular habits, and he was discovered dead in 
 one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St. 
 George's, Hanover Square."
 
 76 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " St. George's, Hanover Square, indeed ! " said 
 the don, and once more he relapsed, after a long 
 whistle, into a significant silence. " Maitland," 
 he said at last, "how did you come to be ac- 
 quainted with these people ? The father, as I 
 understand, was a kind of artist ; but you can't, 
 surely, have met them in Society ? " 
 
 " He came a good deal to my public-house, 'the 
 Hit or Miss. I think I told you about it, sir, and 
 you rather seemed to approve of it. The tavern 
 in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying 
 to do something for the riverside population, and 
 to mix with them for their good, you know." 
 
 "Good-night !" growled Bielby, very abruptly, 
 and with considerable determination in his tone. 
 " I am rather busy this evening. I think you had 
 better think no more about the young lady, and 
 say nothing whatever about the matter to anyone. 
 Good-night!" 
 
 So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, 
 in the astonishment caused by Maitland's avowals, 
 he had allowed to go out, and he applied himself to 
 a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of 
 the Cambridge school, and drank beer. Maitland 
 knew his friend and mentor too well to try to pro- 
 long the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak 
 college room, where a timid fire was smoking and 
 crackling among the wet faggots, with a feeling 
 that he must steer his own course in this affair. 
 It was clearly quite out of the path of Bielby's 
 experience. 
 
 "And yet," thought Maitland, "if I had not 
 taken his advice about trying to become more 
 human, and taken that infernal public-house too, 
 I never would have been in this hole." 
 
 All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything 
 that might reasonably be called food. " He had 
 eaten ; he had not dined," to adopt the distinction
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. JJ 
 
 of Brillat Savarfn. He had been dependent on 
 the gritty and flaccid hospitalities of refreshment- 
 rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now he 
 felt faint as well as weary ; but, rummaging amidst 
 his cupboards, he could find no provisions more 
 tempting and nutritious than a box of potted 
 shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of 
 some Hungarian vintage sent by an advertising 
 firm to the involuntary bailees of St. Gatien's. 
 Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these 
 delicacies. 
 
 He did not forget that he had neglected to 
 answer a note, on philanthropic business, from 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine. Weary as he was, he 
 took pleasure in replying at length, and left the 
 letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a 
 heavy headache, he tumbled into bed, where, for 
 that matter, he went on tumbling and tossing 
 during the greater part of the night. About five 
 o'clock he fell into a sleep full of dreams, only 
 to be wakened, at six, by the steam -whooper, or 
 "devil," a sweet boon with which his philan- 
 thropy had helped to endow the reluctant and 
 even recalcitrant University of Oxford. 
 
 " Instead of becoming human, I have only be- 
 come humanitarian," Maitland seemed to hear his 
 own thoughts whispering to himself in a night- 
 mare. Through the slowly broadening winter 
 dawn, in snatches of sleep that lasted, or seemed 
 to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the 
 thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, 
 with a feverish iteration.
 
 78 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 after tbe inquest. 
 
 O be ill in college rooms, how miserable 
 it is ! Maitland's scout called him at 
 half- past seven, with the invariable 
 question, "Do you breakfast out, sir?" 
 If a man were in the condemned cell, 
 his scout (if in attendance) would probably arouse 
 him on the morning of his execution with, " Do 
 you breakfast out, sir ? " 
 
 "No," said Maitland, in reply to the changeless 
 inquiry ; " in common room as usual. Pack my 
 bag, I am going down by the 9.0 train." 
 
 Then he rose and tried to dress ; but his 
 head ached more than ever, his legs seemed to 
 belong to some one else, and to be no subject of 
 just complacency to their owner. He reeled as 
 he strove to cross the room, then he struggled back 
 into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and cold, 
 he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to 
 his blankets. Anywhere but in college, Maitland 
 would, of course, have rung the bell, and called 
 his servant ; but in our conservative Univer- 
 sities, and especially in so reverend a pile as St. 
 Gatien's, there was, naturally, no bell to ring. 
 Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his 
 great-coat, that he might crawl to the window 
 and shout to Dakyns, his scout. 
 
 But at this moment there fell most gratefully on 
 his ear the sound of a strenuous sniff, repeated at 
 short intervals, in his sitting-room. Often had 
 Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handker-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 79 
 
 chiefless condition of his bedmaker ; but now her 
 sniff was welcome as music, much more so than 
 that of two hunting horns which ambitious 
 sportsmen were trying to blow in quad. 
 
 "Mrs. Trattles!" cried Maitland, and his own 
 voice sounded faint in his ears. " Mrs. Trattles ! " 
 
 The lady thus invoked answered with becoming 
 modesty, punctuated by sniffs, from the other side 
 of the door : 
 
 "Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?" 
 
 " Call Dakyns, please," said Maitland, falling 
 back on his pillow. " I don't feel very well." 
 
 Dakyns appeared in due course. 
 
 " Sorry to hear you 're ill, sir : you do look a 
 little flushed. Hadn't I better send for Mr. 
 Whalley, sir?" 
 
 Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, 
 especially the younger generation, delighted to 
 honour. <# ' 
 
 "No; I don't think you need. Bring me break- 
 fast here. I think I '11 be able to start for town by 
 the 11.58. And bring me my letters." 
 
 " Very well, sir," answered Dakyns. 
 
 Then with that fearless assumption of respon- 
 sibility which always does an Englishman credit, 
 he sent the college messenger in search of Mr. 
 Whalley before he brought round Maitland's letters 
 and his breakfast commons. 
 
 There were no letters bearing on the subject of 
 Margaret's disappearance; if any such had been 
 addressed to him, they would necessarily be, as 
 Maitland remembered after his first feeling of 
 disappointment, at his rooms in London. Neither 
 Miss Marlett, if she had aught to communicate, 
 nor any one else, could be expected to know that 
 Maitland's first act would be to rush to Oxford 
 and consult Bielby. 
 
 The guardian of Margaret turned with no suc- 
 
 6 *
 
 80 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 cess to his breakfast commons : even tea appeared 
 unwelcome and impossible. 
 
 Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, 
 when a knock came to his door, and Mr. Whalley 
 entered. He could not remember having sent for 
 him ; but he felt that, as an invalid once said, 
 "there was a pain somewhere in the room," and 
 he was feebly pleased to see his physician. 
 
 "A very bad feverish cold," was the verdict, and 
 Mr. Whalley would call again next day, till which 
 time Maitland was forbidden to leave his room. 
 
 He drowsed through the day, disturbed by 
 occasional howls from the quadrangle, where the 
 men were snow-balling a little, and, later, by the 
 scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent 
 in to remove the snow, and with it the efficient 
 cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien's. 
 
 So the time passed, Maitland not being quite 
 conscious of its passage, and each hour putting 
 Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach 
 of the very few people who were interested in her 
 existence. Maitland's illness took a more severe 
 form than Whalley had anticipated, and the lungs 
 were affected. Bielby was informed of his state, 
 and came to see him ; but Maitland talked so 
 wildly about the Hit or Miss, about the man in the 
 bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, 
 that the hermit soon withdrew to the more com- 
 prehensible fragments of Demetrius of Scepsis. He 
 visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real 
 kindness ; but the old implicit trust never revived 
 with Maitland's returning health. 
 
 At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, 
 yet perfectly conscious of what had passed, and 
 doubly anxious about what was to be done, if 
 there was, indeed, a chance of doing anything. 
 
 Men of his own standing had by this time be^ 
 come aware that he was in Oxford, and sick,
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 8l 
 
 consequently there was always some one to look 
 after him. 
 
 " Brown," said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth 
 day after his illness began, "would you mind 
 giving me my things ? I '11 try to dress." 
 
 The experiment was so far successful that Mait- 
 land left the queer bare slit of a place called his 
 bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms, by 
 a partition added to the large single room of old 
 times), and moved into the weirdly aesthetic study, 
 decorated in the Early William Morris manner. 
 
 " Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him 
 have this telegram sent to the post ? Awfully 
 sorry to trouble you, but I can't howl yet for 
 myself," whispered Maitland huskily, as he scrib- 
 bled on a telegraph form. 
 
 " Delighted to howl for you," said Brown, and 
 presently the wires were carrying a message to 
 Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at 
 once, on very pressing business. In a couple of 
 hours there came a reply : Barton would be with 
 Maitland by dinner-time. 
 
 The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris 
 manner, looked cosy and even homelike when the 
 lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were 
 drawn, and a monster of the deep — one of the 
 famous Oxford soles, larger than you ever see 
 them elsewhere — smoked between Maitland and 
 Barton. Beside the latter stood a silver quart 
 pot, full of " strong," a reminiscence of " the old 
 coaching days," when Maitland had read with 
 Barton for Greats. The invalid's toast and water 
 wore an air of modest conviviality, and might 
 have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who 
 relied merely on such information as is furnished 
 by the sense of sight. The wing of a partridge (the 
 remainder of the brace fell to Barton's lot) was 
 disposed of by the patient ; and then, over the wine,
 
 82 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 which he did not touch, and the walnuts, which 
 he tried nervously to crack in his thin white hands, 
 Maitland made confession and sought advice. 
 
 It was certainly much easier talking to Barton 
 than to Bielby, for Barton knew so much already, 
 especially about the Hit or Miss; but when it 
 came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, 
 and the kind of prospective engagement to that 
 young lady, Barton rose and began to walk about 
 the room. But the old beams creaked under him 
 in the weak places ; and Barton, seeing how much 
 he discomposed Maitland, sat down again, and 
 steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous 
 St. Gatien's port. 
 
 Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of 
 his narrative, came to the finding of poor Dick 
 Shields' body in the snow -cart, Barton cried, 
 " Why, you don't mean to say that was the man, 
 the girl's father ? By George, I can tell you some- 
 thing about him ! At the inquest my partner, old 
 Munby, made out " 
 
 "Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of 
 course there must have been," said Maitland, 
 whose mind had run so much on Margaret's dis- 
 appearance that he had given little of his thoughts 
 (weak and inconsecutive enough of late) to the 
 death of her father. 
 
 " Of course there has been an inquest. Have 
 you not read the papers since you were ill ?" 
 
 Now, Maitland had the common-room back 
 numbers of the Times since the day of his return 
 from Devonshire in his study at that very moment. 
 But his reading, so far, had been limited to the 
 "Agony Column" of the advertisements (where 
 he half hoped to find some message), and to all 
 the paragraphs headed "Strange Occurrence" and 
 " Mysterious Disappearance." None of these had 
 cast any light on the fortunes of Margaret.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 83 
 
 " I have not seen anything about the inquest," 
 he said. " What verdict did they bring in ? The 
 usual one, I suppose, — ' Visitation,' and all that 
 kind of thing, or ' Death from exposure while 
 under the influence of alcoholic stimulants.' " 
 
 "That's exactly what they made it," said Bar- 
 ton ; " and I don't blame them ; for the medical 
 evidence my worthy partner gave left them no 
 other choice. You can see what he said for your- 
 self in the papers." 
 
 Barton had been turning over the file of the 
 Times, and showed Maitland the brief record of 
 the inquest and the verdict ; matters so common 
 that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept 
 stereotyped, with blanks for names and dates. 
 
 "A miserable end," said Maitland, when he had 
 perused the paragraph. "And now I had better 
 go on with my story. But what did you mean by 
 saying you didn't ' blame ' the coroner's jury ? " 
 
 " Have you any more story ? Is it not enough ? 
 I don't know that I should tell you : it is too 
 horrid!" 
 
 " Don't keep anything from me, please," said 
 Maitland, moving nervously. " I must know 
 everything." 
 
 "Well," answered Barton, his voice sinking to 
 a tone of reluctant horror, — " well, your poor 
 friend was murdered ! That 's what I meant when 
 I said I did not blame the jury : they could have 
 given no other verdict than they did on the evi- 
 dence of my partner." 
 
 Murder ! The very word has power to startle, 
 as if the crime were a new thing, not as old (so 
 all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As a 
 meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and 
 unexplained, a waif of the universe, from a name- 
 less system, so the horror of murder descends on 
 us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of
 
 84 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 an intrusion from some lost star, some wandering 
 world that is Hell. 
 
 11 Murdered !" cried Maitland. " Why, Barton, 
 you must be dreaming ! Who on earth could 
 have murdered poor Shields ? If ever there was 
 a man who was no one's enemy but his own, that 
 man was Shields ! And he literally had nothing 
 that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed 
 him so much — a small sum — paid weekly, on 
 Thursdays ; and it was a Wednesday when he 
 was — when he died. He could not have had a 
 shilling at that moment in the world !" 
 
 " I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but 
 murdered he was, all the same, and that by a very 
 cunning and cautious villain — a man, I should 
 say, of some education." 
 
 " But how could it possibly have been done ? 
 There's the evidence before you in the paper. 
 There was not a trace of violence on him, and the 
 circumstances, which were so characteristic of his 
 ways, were more than enough to account for his 
 death. The exposure, the cold, the mere sleeping 
 in the snow, — it 's well known to be fatal. Why," 
 said Maitland, eagerly, " in a long walk home 
 from shooting in winter, I have had to send back 
 a beater for one of the keepers ; and we found 
 him quite asleep, in a snowdrift, under a hedge. 
 He never would have wakened." 
 
 He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible 
 conclusion which Barton had arrived at. 
 
 The young doctor only shook his head. His 
 opinion was manifestly fixed, 
 
 " But how can you possibly know better than 
 the jury," urged Maitland peevishly, "and the 
 coroner, and the medical officer for the district, 
 who were all convinced that his death was per- 
 fectly natural — that he got drunk, lost his way, 
 lay down in the cart, and perished of exposure ?
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 85 
 
 Why, you did not even hear the evidence. I 
 can't make out," he went on, with the querulous- 
 ness of an invalid, " why you should have come 
 up just to talk such nonsense. The coroner and 
 the jury are sure to have been right." 
 
 " Well, you see, it was not the coroner's 
 business, nor the jury's business, to know better 
 than the medical officer for the district, on 
 whose evidence they relied. But it is my 
 business ; for the said officer is my partner, and, 
 but for me, our business would be worth very 
 little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going 
 an excellent old fellow as ever let a life slip out of 
 his hands." 
 
 " Then, if you knew so much, why didn't you 
 keep him straight ?" 
 
 "Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey 
 with my people, at a wedding, when the death 
 occurred, and they made a rather supeficial ex- 
 amination of the deceased." 
 
 " Still, I see less than ever how you got a 
 chance to form such an extraordinary and horrible 
 opinion if you were not there, and had only this 
 printed evidence," said Maitland, waving a sheet 
 of the Times, " to go by ; and this is dead against 
 3'ou. You 're too clever." 
 
 "But I made a proper and most careful ex- 
 amination myself, on my return to town, the day 
 after the inquest," said Barton, " and I found 
 evidence enough for me — never mind where — to 
 put the matter beyond the reach of doubt. The 
 man was murdered, and murdered, as I said, very 
 deliberately, by someone who was not an ordinary 
 ignorant scoundrel." 
 
 " Still, I don't see how you got a chance to 
 make your examination," said Maitland; "the 
 man would be buried as usual " 
 
 " Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers
 
 86 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 — and there was no one to claim his — are reserved, 
 if needed " 
 
 " I see — don't go on," said Maitland, turning 
 rather pale, and falling back on his sofa, where he 
 lay for a little with his eyes shut. " It is all 
 the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine," 
 he said presently. " In my absence, and as no- 
 body knew where I was, there was naturally 
 no one to claim the body. The kind of people 
 who knew about him will take no trouble or risk 
 in a case like that." He was silent again for a 
 few moments ; then, " What do you make out to 
 have been the cause of death ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well," said Barton slowly, " I don't much care 
 to go into details which you may say I can hardly 
 prove, and I don't want to distress you in your 
 present state of health." 
 
 "Why don't you speak out ! Was he poisoned ? 
 Did you detect arsenic or anything ? He had been 
 drinking with some one ! " 
 
 " No ; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there 
 was literally nothing that could be detected by the 
 most skilled analysis. But, my dear fellow, there 
 are venoms that leave no internal trace. If I am 
 right, — and I think I am, — he was destroyed by 
 one of these. He had been a great traveller, had 
 he not ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Maitland. 
 
 " Well, it is strange ; the murderer must have 
 been a great traveller also. He must have been 
 among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well 
 acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I 
 went there botanising." 
 
 "You won't be more explicit ? " 
 
 " No," he said ; " you must take it on my word, 
 after all." 
 
 Maitland, if not convinced, was silent. He had 
 knowledge enough of Barton, and of his healthy
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 87 
 
 and joyous nature, to be certain that his theory 
 was no morbid delusion ; that he had good grounds 
 for an opinion which, as he said, he could no longer 
 prove — which was, indeed, now incapable of any 
 proof. No one had seen the commission of the 
 crime, and the crime was of such a nature, and 
 so cunningly planned, that it could not possibly 
 be otherwise brought home to the murderer. 
 
 Now Maitland, knowing the Hit or Miss, and the 
 private room upstairs with the dormer windows, 
 where the deed must have been done, if done at 
 all, was certain that there could not possibly have 
 been any eye-witness of the crime. 
 
 " What shall you do ?" he asked, " or have you 
 done anything in consequence of your discovery ? 
 Have you been to the police ? " 
 
 " No," said Barton : " where was the use? How 
 can I prove anything now ? It is not as if poison 
 had been used, that could be detected by analysis. 
 Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss 
 made, the more likely was the murderer to show 
 his hand. Supposing he had a secret motive, — and 
 he must have had, — he will act on that motive 
 sooner or later. The quieter everything is kept, 
 the more he feels certain he is safe, the sooner he 
 will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, 
 there may be a chance of detecting him ; but it 's 
 an outside chance. Do you know anything of the 
 dead man's past history ?" 
 
 " Nothing, except that he was from the North, 
 and had lived a wandering life." 
 
 " Well, we must wait and see. But there is his 
 daughter, left under your care. What do you 
 mean to do about her?" 
 
 The question brought Maitland back to his old 
 perplexities, which were now so terribly increased 
 and confused by what he had just been told. 
 
 " I was going to tell you, when you broke in
 
 88 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 with this dreadful business. Things were bad 
 before ; now they are awful," said Maitland. " His 
 daughter has disappeared! That was what I was 
 coming to : that was the rest of my story. It was 
 difficult and distressing enough before I knew 
 what you tell me ; now — great Heavens ! what 
 am I to do?" 
 
 He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton 
 put his hand encouragingly on his shoulder, and 
 sat so for some minutes. 
 
 " Tell me all about it, old boy?" asked Barton, 
 at length. 
 
 He was very much interested, and most anxious 
 to aid his unfortunate friend. His presence, 
 somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland 
 no longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done 
 after his consultation of Bielby. Thus encouraged, 
 he told, as clearly and fully as possible, the tale of 
 the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire 
 failure even to come upon her traces or those of 
 her companion. 
 
 "Andyou have heard nothing sinceyour illness ? " 
 
 " Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise 
 me to do ?" 
 
 " There is only one thing certain, to my mind," 
 said Barton. " The seafaring man with whom 
 Shields was drinking on the last night of his life, 
 and the gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who 
 sent the telegram in your name and took away 
 Margaret from Miss Marlett's, are in the same 
 employment, or, by George, are probably the same 
 person. Now, have you any kind of suspicion 
 who they or he may be ? or can you suggest any 
 way of tracking him or them ? " 
 
 "No," said Maitland; "my mind is a perfect 
 blank on the subject. I never heard of the sailor 
 till the woman at the Hit or Miss mentioned him, 
 the night the body was found. And I never
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 89 
 
 heard of a friend of Shields', a friend who was a 
 gentleman, till I went down to the school." 
 
 " Then all we can do at present is, not to set the 
 police at work, — they would only prevent the man 
 from showing, — but to find out whether any one 
 answering to the description is ' wanted,' or is on 
 their books, at Scotland Yard. Why are we not 
 in Paris, where a man, whatever his social position 
 might be, who was capable of that unusual form of 
 crime, would certainly have his dossier ? They order 
 these things better in France." 
 
 " There is just one thing about him, at least 
 about the man who was drinking with poor Shields 
 on the night of his death. He was almost cer- 
 tainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, 
 I remember Mrs. Gullick — that 's the landlady of 
 the Hit or Miss — saying that Shields had been 
 occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in 
 that way for sailors." 
 
 "By Jove," said Barton, "if any fellow under- 
 stands tattooing, and the class of jail-birds who 
 practise it, I do. It is a clue after a fashion ; but, 
 after all, many of them that go down to the sea 
 in ships are tattooed, even when they are decent 
 fellows ; and besides, we seldom, in our stage of 
 society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing 
 on but these early decorative designs." 
 
 This was only too obvious, and rather damping 
 to Maitland, who for a moment had been inclined 
 to congratulate himself on his flair as a detective.
 
 Q0 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Zbe 3affa ©ranges. 
 
 " Letting / dare not wait upon / would." 
 
 all fairy gifts, surely the most de- 
 sirable in prospect, and the most 
 embarrassing in practice, would be 
 the magical telescope of Prince Ali, 
 in the Arabian Nights. With his 
 glass, it will be remembered, he could see what- 
 ever was happening on whatever part of the earth 
 he chose, and, though absent, was always able to 
 behold the face of his beloved. How often would 
 one give Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, 
 and the invisible Cap which was made of " a 
 darkness that might be felt" to possess for one 
 hour the Telescope of Fairyland ! 
 
 Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep 
 through the tube, while they were pondering over the 
 means of finding. Margaret, their quest would have 
 been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have 
 been reassured. Yet there was nothing very 
 awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they might 
 have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what 
 the vision would have shown. Margaret was not 
 in some foreign den of iniquity, nor, indeed, in a 
 den at all. The tube enchanted would have 
 revealed to them Margaret, not very far off, not 
 in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria 
 Square, Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not 
 more than commonly dingy, on the drawing-room 
 floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds 
 drawn down, Margaret would have been displayed.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 91 
 
 The testimony of a cloud of witnesses, in the form 
 of phials and medical vessels, proved that she had 
 for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky 
 red of health would have been seen to have faded 
 from her cheeks, and the fun and daring had died 
 out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, 
 the eyes were half-closed from sickness and fatigue, 
 and Margaret, a while ago so ready of speech, did 
 not even bestir herself to answer the question 
 which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, 
 in an attitude of respectful inquiry, was putting as 
 to her health. 
 
 He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe 
 kind of face, and full, red, sensitive, sensual lips, 
 not without a trace of humour. Near the door, 
 in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against 
 her will, was a remarkably handsome young 
 person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or upper- 
 servant. The faces of some women appear to 
 have been furnished by Nature, or informed by 
 habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair 
 members of the less educated classes), " I won't 
 put up with none of them goings on." Such an 
 expression this woman wears. 
 
 " I hope you feel better, my dear ? " the dark 
 gentleman asks again. 
 
 "She's going on well enough," interrupted the 
 woman with the beautiful dissatisfied face. " What 
 with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and 
 tonics as you might bathe in " 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " 
 
 " She ought to get well," the dissatisfied woman 
 continued, as if the invalid were obstinately bent 
 on remaining ill. 
 
 " I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, 
 Mrs. Darling," said the dark gentleman, with 
 mockery in his politeness, " but to the young lady 
 whom I have entrusted to your charge."
 
 0,2 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 "A pretty trust!" the woman replied, with a 
 sniff. 
 
 "Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty 
 trust. And now, Margaret, my dear " 
 
 The fair woman walked to the window, and 
 stared out of it with a trembling lip, and eyes that 
 saw nothing. 
 
 " Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, 
 how do you feel ? " 
 
 " You are very kind," answered the girl at last. 
 " I am sure I am better. I am not very strong 
 yet. I hope I shall get up soon." 
 
 "Is there anything you would like? Perhaps 
 you are tired of peaches and grapes : may I send 
 you some oranges ? " 
 
 " Oh, thank you ; you are very good. I am 
 often thirsty when I waken, or rather when I leave 
 off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep, 
 just now." 
 
 " Poor girl ! " said the dark gentleman, in a 
 pitying voice. "And what do you dream ?" 
 
 " There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, 
 white place," said the girl slowly, "where I am; 
 and something I feel, — something, I don't know 
 what, — drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it ; 
 and then I find myself on a dark plain, and a great 
 black horror, a kind of blackness falling in drifts, 
 like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, 
 till I feel mixed in the blackness ; and there is 
 always some one watching me, and chasing me in 
 the dark, — some one I can't see. Then I slide 
 into the smooth, white, horrible place again, and 
 feel I must get away from it. Oh, I don't know 
 which is worst ! And they go and come all the 
 while I 'm asleep, I suppose." 
 
 " I am waiting for the doctor to look in again ; 
 but all / can do is to get you some Jaffa oranges, 
 nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me, Mrs.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 93 
 
 Darling" (he turned to the housekeeper), "by 
 placing them in Miss Burnside's room, and then, 
 perhaps, she will find them refreshing when she 
 wakes. Good-bye for the moment, Margaret.'' 
 
 The fair woman said nothing, and the dark 
 gentleman walked into the street, where a hansom 
 cab waited for him. " Covent Garden," he cried 
 to the cabman. 
 
 We have not for some time seen, or rather we 
 have for some time made believe not to recognise, 
 the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance 
 (a very compromising one) we achieved early in 
 this narrative. 
 
 Mr. Cranley, " with his own substantial private 
 purpose sun-clear before him" (as Mr. Carlyle 
 would have said, in apologising for some more 
 celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from 
 school. Nor had this been, to a person of his 
 experience and resources, a feat of very great 
 difficulty. When he had once learned, by the 
 simplest and readiest means, the nature of Mait- 
 land's telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had 
 been clear. The telegram which followed Mait- 
 land's, and in which Cranley used Maitland's 
 name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlet f as we 
 have seen. By the most obvious ruses he had 
 prevented Maitland from following his track to 
 London. His housekeeper had entered the 
 "Engaged" carriage at Westbourne Park, and 
 shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment 
 previously occupied by himself and Margaret 
 alone. Between Westbourne Park and Padding- 
 ton, he had packed the notable bearskin coat in 
 his portmanteau. The consequence was, that at 
 Paddington no one noticed a gentleman in a bear- 
 skin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A 
 gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two 
 ladies, by no means answered to the description 
 
 7
 
 94 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 Maitland gave in his examination of the porters. 
 They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention 
 to Maitland's inquiries. 
 
 The success of Cranley's device was secured 
 by its elementary simplicity. A gentleman who, 
 for any reason, wishes to obliterate his trail, does 
 wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, 
 unmistakable garb at one point of his progress. 
 He then becomes, in the minds of most who see 
 him, " the man in the bearskin coat," or " the man 
 in the jack-boots," or " the man with the white 
 hat." His identity is practically merged in that 
 of the coat, or the boots, or the hat ; and when he 
 slips out of them, he seems to leave his person- 
 ality behind, or to pack it up in his portmanteau, 
 or with his rugs. By acting on this principle 
 (which only requires to be stated to win the assent 
 of pure reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost 
 himself and Margaret in London. 
 
 With Margaret his task had been less difficult 
 than it looked. She recognised him as an ac- 
 quaintance of her father's, and he represented to 
 her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war 
 in which her father had served ; that he had lately 
 encountered her father, and pitied his poverty, — 
 in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The 
 father, so he declared, had spoken to him often 
 and anxiously about Margaret, and with dislike 
 and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. 
 Cranley, Shields' chief desire in life had been 
 to see Margaret entirely freed from Maitland's 
 guardianship. But he had been conscious that 
 to take the girl away from school would be harmful 
 to her prospects. Finally, with his latest breath, 
 so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Mar- 
 garet to his old officer, and had implored him to 
 abstract her from the charge of the Fellow of St. 
 Gatien's.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 95 
 
 Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very 
 lively kindness for Maitland, nor had she ever 
 heard her father speak of that unlucky young man 
 with the respect which his kindness, his academic 
 rank, and his position in society deserved. It 
 must be remembered that, concerning the manner 
 of her father's death, she had shrunk from asking 
 questions. She knew it had been sudden ; she 
 inferred that it had not been reputable. Often 
 had she dreaded for him one of the accidents 
 against which Providence does not invariably pro- 
 tect the drunkard. Now the accident had arrived 
 she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. 
 Her new guardian, again, was obviously a gentle- 
 man : he treated her with perfect politeness and 
 respect, and, from the evening of the day when 
 she left school, she had been in the charge of that 
 apparently correct chaperon, the handsome house- 
 keeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. 
 Cranley had even given up to her his own rooms 
 in Victoria Square, and had lodged elsewhere: 
 his exact address Margaret did not know. The 
 only really delicate point — Cranley's assumption 
 of the name of "Mr. Lithgow" — he frankly 
 confessed to her as soon as they were well 
 out of the Dovecot. He represented that, for 
 the fulfilment of her father's last wish, the ruse 
 of the telegram and the assumed name had been 
 necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings 
 of an officer and a gentleman. Poor Margaret had 
 seen nothing of gentlemen, except as philan- 
 thropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit 
 themselves a license and discretion not customary 
 in common society. 
 
 Finally, even had the girl's suspicions been 
 awakened, her illness prevented her from too 
 closely reviewing the situation. She was with her 
 father's friend, an older man by far, and therefore 
 
 7 *
 
 96 the MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 a more acceptable guardian than Maitland. She 
 was fulfilling her father's wish, and hoped soon to 
 be put in the way of independence, and of earning 
 her own livelihood ; and independence was Mar- 
 garet's ideal. 
 
 Her father's friend, her own protector, — in that 
 light she regarded Cranley, when she was well 
 enough to think consecutively. There could be 
 no more complete hallucination. Cranley was 
 one of those egotists who do undoubtedly exist, 
 but whose existence, when they are discovered, is 
 a perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of 
 men. In him the instinct of self-preservation 
 (without which the race could not have endured 
 tor a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, 
 as it is modified in the rest of us, by thousands of 
 years of inherited social experience. Cranley's 
 temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of 
 the first human being who ever found himself and 
 other human beings struggling in a flood for a 
 floating log that will only support one of them. 
 Everything must give way to his desire : he had 
 literally never denied himself anything that he 
 dared to take. As certainly as the stone, once 
 tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls 
 back to earth, so surely Cranley would obtain 
 what he desired (if it seemed safe), though a 
 human life, or a human soul, stood between him 
 and his purpose. 
 
 Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between 
 him and the aims on which his greed was despe- 
 rately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she 
 should vanish ; and to that end he had got her 
 into his power. Cranley's original idea had been 
 the obvious one of transporting the girl to the 
 Continent, where, under the pretence that a suit- 
 able situation of some kind had been found for 
 her, he would so arrange that England should
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 97 
 
 never see her more, and that her place among 
 honest women should be lost for ever. But there 
 were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan. 
 For instance, the girl knew some French, and was 
 no tame, unresisting fool ; and then Margaret's 
 illness had occurred, and had caused delay, and 
 given time for reflection. 
 
 "After all," he thought, as he lit his cigar and 
 examined his moustache in the mirror (kindly 
 provided for that purpose in well-appointed han- 
 soms), — " after all, it is only the dead who tell no 
 tales, and make no inconvenient claims." 
 
 For after turning over in his brain the various 
 safe and easy ways of "removing" an inconvenient 
 person, one devilish scheme had flashed across a 
 not uninstructed intellect — a scheme which ap- 
 peared open to the smallest number of objections. 
 
 " She shall take a turn for the worse," he thought ; 
 " and the doctor will be an uncommonly clever 
 man, and particularly well read in Criminal Juris- 
 prudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it." 
 
 Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped 
 at Covent Garden, dismissed his cab, and pur- 
 chased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges. He 
 then hailed another cab, and drove with his 
 parcel to the shop of an eminent firm of chemists, 
 again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked 
 for a certain substance, which it may be as well 
 not to name, and got what he wanted in a small 
 phial, marked poison. Mr. Cranley then called 
 a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical in- 
 strument maker's (also eminent], and amused his 
 leisure during the drive in removing the label from 
 the bottle. At the surgical instrument maker's he 
 complained of neuralgia, and purchased a hypo- 
 dermic syringe for injecting morphine or some 
 such anodyne into his arm. A fourth cab took 
 him back to the house in Victoria Square, where
 
 98 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 he let himself in with a key, entered the dining- 
 room, and locked the door. 
 
 Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After 
 aimlessly moving chairs about for a few minutes, 
 and prowling up and down the room, he paused 
 and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff 
 his pocket-handkerchief into the keyhole, and to 
 lay the hearth-rug across the considerable chink 
 which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught 
 under the bottom of the door. Then the Honour- 
 able Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds, and 
 unpacked his various purchases. 
 
 He set them out on the table in order — the 
 oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe. 
 
 Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose 
 half-a-dozen of the best, and laid the others on a 
 large dessert plate in the dining-room cupboard. 
 One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on 
 the table, in company with a biscuit or two. 
 
 When all this had been arranged to his mind, 
 Mr. Cranley chose another orange, filled a wine- 
 glass with the liquid in the phial, and then drew 
 off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he 
 very delicately and carefully punctured the skin 
 of one of the oranges, and injected into the fruit 
 the contents of the syringe. This operation he 
 elaborately completed in the case of each of the 
 six chosen oranges, and then tenderly polished 
 their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit 
 he had eaten. That portion of the skin he con- 
 sumed to dust in the fire ; and, observing that a 
 strong odour remained in the room, he deliberately 
 turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. 
 After this he opened the window, sealed his own 
 seal in red wax on paper a great many times, 
 finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, 
 which he smoked through with every appearance 
 of enjoyment. While engaged on this portion of
 
 The mark of cain. gg 
 
 his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry 
 from the glass, first carefully rinsed, into which 
 he had poured the liquid from the now unlabelled 
 phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with 
 the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped 
 in delicate paper, within the basket, and closed the 
 window. 
 
 Next he unlocked the door, and without opening 
 it, remarked in a sweet voice : 
 
 " Now, Alice, you may come in ! " 
 
 The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered. 
 
 "How is Miss Burnside?" he asked, in the same 
 silvery accents. (He had told Margaret that she 
 had better be known by that name, for the present 
 at least.) 
 
 " She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. 
 What do you want with her ? Why are you keep- 
 ing her in this house ? What devil's brew have 
 you been making that smells of gas and sherry 
 and sealing-wax ? " 
 
 " My dear girl," replied Mr. Cranley, "you put 
 too many questions at once. As to your first pair 
 of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss 
 Burnside are my own business, and do not con- 
 cern you, as my housekeeper. As to the ' devil's 
 brew,' which you indicate in a style worthy rather 
 of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of 
 an epoch of positive science, did you never taste 
 sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that 
 is one of the very few alcoholic combinations 
 in which you have never, to my knowledge, at- 
 tempted experiments. Is there any other matter 
 on which I can enlighten an intelligent and re- 
 spectful curiosity ? " 
 
 The fair woman's blue eyes and white face seemed 
 to glitter with anger, like a baleful lightening. 
 
 " I don't understand your chaff," she said, with 
 a few ornamental epithets, which, in moments
 
 100 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate 
 her conversatior. 
 
 "I grieve to be obscure," he answered; "brevis 
 esse laboro, the old story. But, as you say Miss 
 Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens, 
 she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these 
 oranges and leave them on a plate by her bedside ? 
 They are Jaffa oranges : and finer fruit, Alice, my 
 dear, i have seldom tasted ! After that, go to 
 Cavendish Square, and leave this note at the 
 doctor's." 
 
 "Oh, nothing's too good for kerl" growled the 
 jealous woman, thinking of the fruit ; to which 
 he replied by offering her several of the oranges 
 not used in his experiment. 
 
 Bearing inese she withdrew, throwing a spiteful 
 glance aijd leaving the door unshut, so that her 
 master distinctly heard her open Margaret's door, 
 come out again, and finally leave the horse. 
 
 "Now, I'll give her a quarter of an hour to 
 waken," said Mr. Cranley, and he took from his 
 pocket a fresh copy of the Times. He glanced rather 
 anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet. 
 " Still advertising for him," he said to himself; and 
 he then turned to the sporting news. His calm- 
 ness was extraordinary, but natural in him ; for 
 the reaction of terror at the possible detection of 
 his villainy had not yet come on. When he had 
 read all that interested him in the Times, he looked 
 hastily at his watch : 
 
 "Just twenty minutes gone," he said. "Time 
 she wakened, — and tried those Jaffa oranges." 
 
 Then he rose, went upstairs stealthily, paused 
 a moment opposite Margaret's door, and entered 
 the drawing-room. Apparently he did not find 
 any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable 
 enough ; for he chose a large and heavy fauteuil, 
 took it up in his arms, and began to carry it out.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 101 
 
 In the passage, just opposite Margaret's chamber, 
 he stumbled so heavily ihat he fell, and the weighty 
 piece of furniture was dashed against the door of 
 the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked 
 it up, and retired silently to the dining-room. 
 
 " That would have wakened the dead," he whis- 
 pered to himself, " and she is not dead — yet. She 
 is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them, 
 and then " 
 
 The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as 
 he sat, gnawing his moustache, in the chair he 
 had brought down with him. Now the deed was 
 being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke 
 to a kind of criminal remorse. Now anxiety for 
 the issue made him wish the act undone, or frus- 
 trated ; now he asked himself if there were no 
 more certain and less perilous way. So intent 
 was his eagerness that a strange kind of lucidity 
 possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard 
 what was passing in the chamber of sickness, 
 which he had made a chamber of Death. 
 
 She has wakened — she has looked round — she 
 has seen the poisoned fruit — she has blessed him 
 for his kindness in bringing it — she has tasted the 
 oranges — she has turned to sleep again — and the 
 unrelenting venom is at its work ! 
 
 Oh, strange forces that are about us, all in- 
 evitably acting, each in his hour and his place, 
 each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the 
 right hand or to the left ! The raindrop running 
 down the pane, the star revolving round the sun 
 of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains 
 of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing 
 and burning the tissues, — each seems to move in 
 his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting 
 will. Innocence, youth, beauty, — that will spares 
 them not. The rock falls at its hour, whoever is 
 under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be
 
 102 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 blended with the holy elements. It is a will 
 that moves all things — mens agitat molem; and yet 
 we can make that will a slave of our own, and 
 turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, 
 to the accomplishment of our desires. 
 
 It was not, naturally, with those transcendental 
 reflections that the intellect of Mr. Cranley was 
 at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually 
 to be present in Margaret's chamber, watching 
 every movement and hearing every heart-beat of 
 the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid 
 face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, 
 did not therefore speak of late ruth, or the 
 beginning of remorse. 
 
 It was entirely on his own security and chances 
 of escaping detection that he was musing. 
 
 " Now it 's done, it can't be undone," he said. 
 " But is it so very safe, after all ? The stuff is 
 not beyond analysis, unluckily ; but it 's much 
 more hard to detect this way, mixed with the 
 orange juice, than any other way. And then 
 there's all the horrid fuss afterwards. Even if 
 there is not an inquest — as, of course, there won't 
 be — they '11 ask who the girl is, what the devil she 
 was doing here. Perhaps they '11, some of them, 
 recognise Alice : she has been too much before 
 the public, confound her. It may not be very 
 hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps." 
 
 And then he looked mechanically at his cold 
 fingers, and bit his thumb-nail, and yawned. 
 
 "By gad! I wish I had not risked it," he said 
 to himself; and his complexion was now of a 
 curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter 
 painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. 
 He sank back in his chair, with his hands all 
 thrilling and pricking to the finger-tips. He took 
 a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could 
 scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. IO3 
 
 with his teeth. A long pull at the liquor 
 restored him, and he began his round of reflections 
 again. 
 
 " That French fellow who tried it this way in 
 
 Scotland was found out," he said; "and " 
 
 He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the 
 " French fellow," consequently, suffered the ex- 
 treme penalty of the law. " But then he was a 
 fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it 
 infernally. Still, it 's not absolutely safe : the 
 other plan I thought of first was better. By 
 gad ! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the 
 stuff. Perhaps she hasn't. Anyway, she must 
 be asleep again now ; and, besides, there are the 
 other oranges to be substituted for those left in 
 the room, if she has taken it. I must go and see. 
 I don't like the job." 
 
 He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned 
 oranges, and the skin of a sixth, and so crept up- 
 stairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel. 
 With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped 
 against hope, out of his very poltroonery, that 
 murder had not been done. At the girl's door he 
 waited and listened, his face horribly agitated 
 and shining wet. All was silent. His heart was 
 sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump : 
 he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost 
 feared it might waken the sleeper. If only, after 
 all, she had not touched the fruit ! 
 
 Then he took the door-handle in his clammy 
 grasp : he had to cover it with a handkerchief to 
 get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the 
 door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except 
 for that dreadful husky thumping of his own heart. 
 At this moment the postman's hard knock at 
 the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then 
 he entered : a dreadful visitor, had anyone seen 
 him. She did not see him : she was asleep,
 
 104 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 sound asleep : in the dirty brown twilight of a 
 London winter day, he could make out that 
 much. He did not dare draw close enough to 
 observe her face minutely, or bend down and 
 listen for her breath. And the oranges ! Eagerly 
 he looked at them. There were only five of them. 
 Surely — no ! a sixth had fallen on the floor, where 
 it was lying. With a great sigh of relief he picked 
 up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, 
 and ; as shirkingly as he had come, — yet shaking 
 his hand at the girl, and cursing his own cowardice 
 under his breath, — he stole downstairs, opened 
 the dining-room door, and advanced into the 
 blind, empty dusk. 
 
 " Now I '11 settle with you ! " came a voice out 
 of the dimness ; and the start wrought so wildly 
 on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as they 
 were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm 
 and despair. Was he trapped, and by whom ? 
 
 In a moment he saw whence the voice came. 
 It was only Alice Darling, in bonnet and cloak, 
 and with a face flushed with something more than 
 anger, that stood before him. 
 
 Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed 
 of his own alarm, and tried to dissemble it. He 
 sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely 
 observed : 
 
 "Now that you have returned, Alice, will you 
 kindly bring lights ? I want to read." 
 
 " What were you doing upstairs just now ? " she 
 snarled. "Why did you send me off to the 
 doctor's, out of the way ? " 
 
 " My good girl, I have again and again advised 
 you to turn that invaluable curiosity of yours, — 
 curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold so 
 justly views with high esteem, — into wider and 
 nobler channels. Disdain the merely personal; 
 accept the calm facts of domestic life as you find
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 105 
 
 them ; approach the broader and less irritating 
 problems of Sociology (pardon the term) or Meta- 
 physics." 
 
 It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of 
 teasing this woman by an ironical jargon which 
 mystified her into madness. This time he went 
 too far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion, 
 she lifted a knife that lay on the dining-room 
 table and made for him. But this time, being 
 prepared, he was not alarmed ; nay, he seemed to 
 take pleasure in the success of his plan of torment- 
 ing. The heavy escritoire at which he sat was a 
 breastwork between him and the angry woman. 
 He coolly opened a drawer, produced a revolver, 
 and remarked : 
 
 "No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, 
 Alice. I asked for lights ; and you will be good 
 enough to bring them. I am your master, you 
 know, in every sense of the word ; and you are 
 aware that you had better both hold your tongue 
 and keep your hands off me — and off drink. Fetch 
 the lamp ! " 
 
 She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. 
 She returned, set the lamp silently on the table, 
 and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which 
 lay on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. 
 It was a rather peculiar letter to look at, or rather 
 the envelope was peculiar ; for, though bordered 
 with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal 
 should have been, with a strange device in gold 
 and colours, — a brown bun, in a glory of gilt rays. 
 
 " Mrs. St. John Deloraine,' 1 he said, taking it 
 up. " How in the world did she find me out ? 
 Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer 
 than a brother, — a deal closer than Surbiton, 
 anyhow." 
 
 Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. 
 Cranley, and bore the second title of the family.
 
 106 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " I don't suppose there is another woman in 
 London," he thought to himself, "that has not 
 heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that 
 would write to me." 
 
 Then he tore the chromatic splendours of the 
 device on the envelope, and read the following 
 epistle : 
 
 " Early English Bunhonse, 
 
 " Chelsea, Friday. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Cranley, 
 
 " Where are you hiding, or yachting, you 
 wandering man ? I can hear nothing of you from 
 any one — nothing good, and you know I never believe 
 anything else. Do come and see me, at the old Bun- 
 house here, and tell me about yourself" — ("She has 
 heard," he muttered) — " and help me in a little difficulty. 
 Our housekeeper (you know we are strictly blue ribbon — 
 a cordon bleu, I call her) has become engaged to a 
 plumber, and she is leaving us. Can you recommend me 
 another ? I know how interested you are (in spite of 
 your wicked jokes) in our little enterprise. And we 
 also want a girl, to be under the housekeeper, and keep 
 the accounts. Surely you will come to see me, whether 
 you can advise me or not. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " Mary St. John Deloraine." 
 
 " Idiot ! " murmured Mr. Cranley as he finished 
 reading this document ; and then he added, " By 
 Jove ! it 's lucky, too. I '11 put these two infernal 
 women off on her, and Alice will soon do for the 
 girl, if she once gets at the drink. She 's danger- 
 ous, by Jove, when she has been drinking. Then 
 the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain 
 sailing in smooth waters."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 107 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 /ifcrs. St. 3obn S)eloraine. 
 
 RS. ST. JOHN DELORAINE, whose 
 letter to Mr. Cranley we have been 
 privileged to read, was no ordinary 
 widow. As parts of her character and 
 aspects of her conduct were not devoid 
 of the kind of absurdity which is caused by virtues 
 out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder, 
 or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine has seldom inhabited a very 
 pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a house 
 in Cheyne Walk. 
 
 The maiden name of this lady was by no means 
 so euphonious as that which she had attained by 
 marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, 
 in the county of Somerset, was a very lively, good- 
 hearted, and agreeable young woman ; but she was 
 by no means favourably looked on by the ladies 
 of the County Families. Now, in the district 
 around Chipping Carby, the County Families are 
 very County indeed, few more so. There is in 
 their demeanour a kind of morgue so funereal and 
 mournful, that it inevitably reminds the observer 
 (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, de- 
 signed by Meryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert 
 Browning. The County Families near Chipping 
 Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure 
 they do take, they take entirely in the society of 
 their equals. So determined are they to drink 
 delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody 
 else, that even the Clergy are excluded, ex officio,
 
 108 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 and in their degrading capacity of ministers of 
 Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. 
 As we all know how essential young curates fresh 
 from college are to the very being of rural lawn 
 tennis, no finer proof can be given of the inaccessi- 
 bility of the County people around Chipping Carby, 
 and of the sacrifices which they are prepared to 
 make to their position. 
 
 Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably 
 (despite his profession) one of the gentlest born of 
 men, was, some seven years ago, a certain Mr. 
 St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct 
 position of a squarson, being at once Squire and 
 Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At the 
 head of the quaint old village street stands, mir- 
 rored in a moat, girdled by beautiful gardens, and 
 shadowy with trees, the Manor House and Par- 
 sonage (for it is both in one) of Wentley Deloraine. 
 
 To this desirable home and opulent share of 
 earth's good things did Mr. St. John Deloraine 
 succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he 
 travelled a good deal, he was held in great favour 
 and affection by the County matrons and the long- 
 nosed young ladies of the County. Another, 
 dwelling on such heights as he, might have be- 
 come haughty ; but there was in this young man 
 a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which 
 often drove him from the society of his equals, 
 and took him into that of attorneys' daughters. 
 Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting 
 at Chipping Carby, and there he beheld Miss 
 Widdicombe. With her he paced the level turf, 
 her " points " he counted, and he found that 
 she, at least, could appreciate his somewhat apt 
 quotation from Chastelavd : 
 
 "Pray heaven, we make good Ends." 
 Miss Widdicombe did make good " Ends."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. IOO, 
 
 She vanquished Mrs. Struggles, the veteran lady 
 champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman 
 who was now on the verge of sixty. Why 
 are ladies who, almost professionally, " rejoice 
 in arrows," like the Homeric Artemis — why are 
 they nearly always so well stricken in years ? 
 Was Maid Marion forty at least, before her per- 
 formances obtained for her a place in the well- 
 known band of Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.? 
 
 This, however, is a digression. For our purpose 
 it is enough that the contrast between Miss Widdi- 
 combe's vivacity and the deadly stolidity of the 
 County Families, between her youth and the ma- 
 turity of her vanquished competitors, entirely won 
 the heart of Mr. St. John Deloraine. He saw 
 — he loved her — he was laughed at — he proposed — 
 he was accepted — and, oh, shame ! the County had 
 to accept, more or less, Miss Widdicombe, the 
 attorney's daughter, as chatelaine (delightful word, 
 and dear to the author of Guy Livingstone) of 
 Wentley Deloraine. 
 
 When the early death of her husband threw 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine almost alone on the 
 world (for her family had, naturally, been offended 
 by her good fortune), she left the grey old squar- 
 sonage, and went to town. In London, Mrs. St. 
 John Deloraine did not find people stiff. With a 
 good name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a 
 gentle tongue, and plenty of money, she was wel- 
 come almost everywhere, except at the big County 
 dinners which the County people of her district 
 give to each other when they come to town. 
 
 This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity 
 and philanthropy in the earlier days of her be- 
 reavement ; but, unlike most of us, her benevolence 
 had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her 
 sorrow. Never, surely, was there such a festive 
 philanthropist as Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She 
 
 8
 
 110 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 would go from a garden party to a mothers' meeting ; 
 she was great at taking children for a day in the 
 country, and had the art of keeping them amused. 
 She was on a dozen charitable committees, be- 
 longed to at least three clubs, at which gentlemen as 
 well as ladies of fashion were eligible, and where 
 music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner 
 hours. 
 
 So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. 
 John Deloraine, that she made bosom friends for life, 
 and contracted vows of eternal sympathy, wherever 
 she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she has 
 been seen enjoying herself with acquaintances a little 
 dubious, like Greek texts which, if not absolutely 
 corrupt, yet stand greatly in need of explanation. 
 It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in 
 the old sense, — that is, gentlemen in quest of a 
 fortune, — pursued hotly or artfully after Mrs. St. 
 John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment 
 suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely 
 wasted on her, and her least warrantable admirers 
 found that she insisted on accepting them as 
 endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as 
 some amateurs of music are incapable of con- 
 ceiving that there breathes a man who has no joy 
 in popular concerts (we shall have popular conic 
 sections next), so Mrs. St. John Deloraine per- 
 severed in crediting all she met with a passion for 
 virtue. Their speech might bewray them as world- 
 lings of the world, but she insisted on interpreting 
 their talk as a kind of harmless levity, as a mere 
 cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature. 
 Thus no one ever combined a delight in good works, 
 with a taste for good things, so successfully as Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine. 
 
 At this moment the lady's "favourite vanity," 
 in the matter of good works, was The Bunhouse. 
 This really serviceable, though quaint, institution
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. Ill 
 
 was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland's enterprise 
 of the philanthropic public-house, the Hit or Miss. 
 In a slum of Chelsea there might have been ob- 
 served a modest place of entertainment, in the 
 coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chel- 
 sea Bun painted on the sign. This piece of art, 
 which gave its name to the establishment, was 
 the work of one of Mrs. St. John Deloraine's 
 friends, an artist of the highest promise, who 
 fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch 
 and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened 
 beginning, The Bunhouse did very useful work. It 
 was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for 
 Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and 
 domesticated slavey of common life, but for the 
 tameless tribes of young women of the metropolis. 
 Those who disdain service, who turn up expres- 
 sive features at sewing machines, and who decline 
 to stand perpendicularly for fifteen hours a day 
 in shops — all these young female outlaws, not pro- 
 fessionally vicious, found in The Bunhouse a kind 
 of charitable shelter and home. 
 
 They were amused, they were looked after, 
 they were encouraged not to stand each other 
 drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers 
 and fathers. "Places" were found for them, in 
 the rare instances when they condescended to 
 " places." Sometimes they breakfasted at The 
 Btmhouse, sometimes went there to supper. Very 
 often they came in a state of artificial cheerful- 
 ness, or ready for battle. Then there would 
 arise such a disturbance as civilisation seldom 
 sees. Not otherwise than when boys, having 
 tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the 
 handle of a door — they then spit, and shriek, 
 and swear, fur flies, and the clamour goes up to 
 Heaven : so did the street resound when the 
 young patrons of The Bunhouse were in a warlike 
 
 8 *
 
 112 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 humour. Then the stern housekeeper would inter- 
 vene, and check these motions of their minds, haec 
 ccvtamina tanta, turning the more persistent com- 
 batants into the street. Next da.y Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine would come in her carriage, and try to 
 be very severe, and then would w.eep a little, and 
 all the girls would shed tears, all would have a 
 good cry together, and finally the Lady Mother 
 (Mrs. St. John Deloraine) would take a few of them 
 for a drive in the Park. After that there would 
 be peace for a while, and presently disturbances 
 would come again. 
 
 For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine wanted a housekeeper and an assistant. 
 The former housekeeper, as we have been told, had 
 yielded to love, " which subdues the hearts of all 
 female women, even of the prudent," according to 
 Homer, and was going to share the home and bear 
 the children of a plumber. With her usual invinci- 
 ble innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen 
 to regard the Hon. Thomas Cranley as a kind good 
 Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in 
 her need of a housekeeper and assistant. 
 
 No application could possibly have suited that 
 gentleman better. He could give his own servant 
 an excellent character ; and if once she was left to 
 herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, 
 that young lady's earthly existence would shortly 
 cease to embarrass Mr. Cranley. Probably there 
 was not one other man among the motley herds of 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine's acquaintance who would 
 have used her unsuspicious kindness as an instru- 
 ment in a plot of any sort. But Mr. Cranley had 
 (when there was no personal danger to be run) 
 the courage of his character. 
 
 " Shall I go and lunch with her ? " he asked 
 himself as he twisted her note, with its character- 
 istic black border and device of brown and gold.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. IIJ 
 
 " I haven't shown anywhere I was likely to meet 
 any one I knew, not since — since I came back from 
 Monte Carlo." 
 
 Even to himself he did not like to mention that 
 affair of the Cockpit. The man in the story who 
 boasted that he had committed every crime in the 
 calendar, withdrew his large words when asked 
 "if he had ever cheated at cards." 
 
 "Well," Mr. Cranley went on, " I don't know: 
 I daresay it 's safe enough. She does know some 
 of those Cockpit fellows ; confound her, she knows 
 all sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely 
 to be up so early in the day — not up to luncheon 
 anyhow. She says" — and he looked again at the 
 note — " that she '11 be alone ; but she won't. Every 
 one she sees before lunch she asks to luncheon ; 
 every one she meets before dinner she asks to dinner. 
 I wish I had her money : it would be simpler and 
 safer by a very long way than this kind of business. 
 There really seems no end to it when once you 
 begin. However, here goes," said Mr. Cranley, 
 sitting down to write a letter at the escritoire 
 which had just served him as a bulwark and 
 breastwork. " I '11 write and accept. Probably 
 she '11 have no one with her, but some girl from 
 Chipping Carby, or some missionary from the 
 Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen 
 like me." 
 
 As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. 
 Cranley arrived, when the clock was pointing to 
 half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine's house 
 in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the 
 drawing-room before that lady, in a costume which 
 agreeably became her pleasant English style of 
 beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a 
 favourite Dandie Dinmont terrier, and holding out 
 both her hands. 
 
 The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine
 
 114 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 had scarcely grasped the hand which Mr. Cranley 
 extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the 
 carpet and was consoling the Dandie. 
 
 " Love in which thy hound has part," quoted 
 Mr. Cranley. And the lady, rising with her face 
 becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair, 
 smiled, and did not remark the sneer. 
 
 " Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley," 
 she said ; " and, as I have put off luncheon till 
 two, do tell me that you know some one who 
 will suit me for my dear Bunhouse. I know how 
 much you have always been interested in our 
 little project." 
 
 Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable 
 coincidence, he knew the very kind of people she 
 wanted. Alice he briefly described as a respect- 
 able woman of great strength of character, " of 
 body too, I believe, which will not make her less 
 fit for the position." 
 
 " No," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly ; 
 " the dear girls are sometimes a little tiresome. 
 On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, 
 you know, went to one of the exhibitions with her 
 fiance, and the girls broke all the windows and 
 almost all the tea things." 
 
 " The woman whom I am happy to be able to 
 recommend to you will not stand anything of that 
 kind," answered Mr. Cranley. " She is quiet, but 
 extremely firm, and has been accustomed to deal 
 with a very desperate character. At one time, I 
 mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a 
 person of treacherous and ungovernable disposi- 
 tion." 
 
 This was true enough ; and Mr. Cranley then 
 began to give a more or less fanciful history of 
 Margaret. She had been left in his charge by her 
 father, an early acquaintance, a man who had 
 known better days, but had bequeathed her
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 115 
 
 nothing, save an excellent schooling, and the 
 desire to earn her own livelihood. 
 
 So far, he knew he was safe enough ; for Mar- 
 garet was the last girl to tell the real tale of her 
 life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was strong 
 enough to keep her silent, even had she not been 
 naturally proud and indisposed to make confi- 
 dences. 
 
 "There is only one thing I must ask," said Mr. 
 Cranley, when he had quite persuaded the lady 
 that Margaret would set a splendid example to 
 her young friends. " How soon does your house- 
 keeper leave you, and when do you need the 
 services of the new comers ? " 
 
 "Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He 
 really is a good man, and I like him better for it, 
 though it seems rather selfish of him to want to 
 rob me of Joan. He is determined to be married 
 before next Bank Holiday, — in a fortnight that is, — 
 and then they will go on their honeymoon of three 
 days to Yarmouth." 
 
 Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made 
 the plumber a yet more impetuous wooer. 
 
 " No laggard in love," he said, smiling. " Well, 
 in a fortnight the two women will be quite ready 
 for their new place. But I must ask you to re- 
 member that the younger is somewhat delicate, 
 and has by no means recovered from the shock 
 of her father's sudden death, — a very sad affair," 
 added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice. 
 
 " Poor dear girl ! " cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, 
 with the ready tears in her eyes ; for this lady 
 spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep 
 with those who weep, and also laughed with those 
 who laugh. 
 
 Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, 
 led her thoughts off to the latest farce in which 
 Mr. Toole had amused the town ; and when Mrs.
 
 Il6 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 St. John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again 
 over her memories of this entertainment, she sud- 
 denly looked at her watch. 
 
 "Why, he 's very late," she said ; " and yet it is 
 not far to come from the Hit ov Miss." 
 
 " From the Hit or Miss ! " cried Mr. Cranley, 
 much louder than he was aware. 
 
 " Yes ; you may well wonder, if you don't know 
 about it, that I should have asked a gentleman 
 from a public-house to meet you. But you will be 
 quite in love with him : he is such a very good 
 young man. Not handsome, nor very amusing ; 
 but people think a great deal too much of amusing- 
 ness now. He is very, very good, and spends 
 almost all his time among the poor. He is a 
 Fellow of his College at Oxford." 
 
 During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretend- 
 ing to play with the terrier; but, stoop as he might, 
 his face was livid, and he knew it. 
 
 "Did I tell you his name?" Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine ran on. " He is a " 
 
 Here the door was opened, and the servant 
 announced " Mr. Maitland." 
 
 When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed 
 her new guest, she turned, and found that Mr. 
 Cranley was looking out of the window. 
 
 His position was indeed agonising, and, in the cir- 
 cumstances, a stronger heart might have blenched 
 at the encounter. 
 
 When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been 
 the guest of that philanthropist, and he had gone 
 from his table to swindle his fellow- revellers. 
 What other things he had done — things in which 
 Maitland was concerned — the reader knows, or at 
 least suspects. But it was not these deeds which 
 troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were 
 undetected. It was that affair of the Baccarat 
 which unmanned him.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I17 
 
 There was nothing for it but to face Maitland 
 and the situation. 
 
 " Let me introduce you " said Mrs. St. John 
 
 Deloraine. 
 
 "There is no need," interrupted Maitland. 
 " Mr. Cranley and I have known each other for 
 some time. I don't think we have met," he added, 
 looking at Cranley, " since you dined with me at 
 the Olympic, and we are not likely to meet again, 
 I 'm afraid ; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine, I go to Paris on business 
 of importance." 
 
 Mr. Cranley breathed again : it was obvious 
 that Maitland, living out of the world as he did, 
 and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be) 
 with private affairs of an urgent character, had 
 never been told of the trouble at the Cockpit, or 
 had, in his absent fashion, never attended to what 
 he might have heard with the hearing of the ear. 
 As to Paris, he had the best reason for guessing 
 why Maitland was bound thither, as he was the 
 secret source of the information on which Mait- 
 land proposed to act. 
 
 At luncheon, — which, like the dinner described 
 by the American guest, was "luscious and abun- 
 dant," — Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than 
 the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. 
 He recounted little philanthropic misadventures 
 of his own, — cases in which he had been humor- 
 ously misled by the Captain Wraggs of this world, 
 or beguiled by the authors of that polite correspon- 
 dence — begging letters. 
 
 When luncheon was over, and when Maitland 
 was obliged, reluctantly, to go (for he liked Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine's company very much), Cranley, 
 who had determined to see him out, shook hands 
 in a very cordial way with the Fellow of St. 
 Gatien's.
 
 Il8 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " And when are we likely to meet again ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " I really don't know," said Maitland. " I have 
 business in Paris, and I cannot say how long I 
 may be detained on the Continent." 
 
 " No more can I," said Mr. Cranley to himself; 
 " but I hope you won't return in time to bother 
 me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you 
 have the luck to return at all." 
 
 But while he said this to himself, to Maitland 
 he only wished a good voyage, and particularly 
 recommended to him a comedy (and a comedienne) 
 at the Palais Royal. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Graps. 
 
 HE day before the encounter with Mr. 
 Cranley at the house of the lady of The 
 Bunhouse, Barton, when he came home 
 from a round of professional visits, 
 had found Maitland waiting in his 
 chill, unlighted lodgings. Of late, Maitland had 
 got into the habit of loitering there, discussing and 
 discussing all the mysteries which made him feel 
 that he was indeed "moving about in worlds not 
 realised." Keen as was the interest which Barton 
 took in the labyrinth of his friend's affairs, he now 
 and again wearied of Maitland, and of a conver- 
 sation that ever revolved round the same fixed 
 but otherwise uncertain points. 
 
 " Hullo, Maitland ; glad to see you," he observed, 
 with some shade of hypocrisy. "Anything new 
 to-day?"
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. Iig 
 
 " Yes," said Maitland ; " I really do think I have 
 a clue at last." 
 
 "Well, wait a bit till they bring the candles," 
 said Barton, groaning as the bell-rope came away 
 in his hands. " Bring lights, please, and tea, and 
 stir up the fire, Jemima, my friend," he remarked, 
 when the blackened but alert face of the little 
 slavey appeared at the door. 
 
 "Yes, Dr. Barton, in a minute, sir," answered 
 Jemima, who greatly admired the Doctor, and in 
 ten minutes the dismal lodgings looked almost 
 comfortable. 
 
 " Now for your clue, old man," exclaimed 
 Barton, as he handed Maitland a cup of his pecu- 
 liar mixture, very weak, with plenty of milk and 
 no sugar. " Oh, Ariadne, what a boon that clue 
 of yours has been to the detective mind ! To 
 think that, without the Minotaur, the police would 
 probably never have hit on that invaluable ex- 
 pression, ' the police have a clue ! ' " 
 
 Maitland thought this was trifling with the 
 subject. 
 
 "This advertisement," he said gravely, "appears 
 to me undoubtedly to refer to the miscreant who 
 carried off Margaret, poor girl." 
 
 "Does it, by Jove?" cried Barton, with some 
 eagerness this time. " Let 's have a look at it," 
 
 This was what he read aloud : 
 
 " Bearskin Coat. — The gentleman, travelling with a 
 young lady, who, on Feb. 19th, left a Bearskin Coat at 
 the Hotel Alsace and Lorraine, Avenue de l'Opera, 
 Paris, is requested to remove it, or it will be sold to 
 defray expenses. " Dupin." 
 
 "This may mean business," he said, "or it may 
 not. In the first place, is there such a hotel in 
 Paris as the 'Alsace et Lorraine,' and is M. Dupin 
 the proprietor ? "
 
 120 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " That's all right," said Maitland. " I went at 
 once to the Club, and looked up the Bottin, the 
 Paris Directory, don't you know." 
 
 " So far, so good ; and yet I don't quite see what 
 you can make of it. It does not come to much, 
 you know, even if the owner of the coat is the 
 man you want. And again, is he likely to have 
 left such a very notable article of dress behind 
 him in a hotel ? Anyway, can't you send some 
 detective fellow ? Are you going over yourself in 
 this awful weather ? " 
 
 So Barton argued, but Maitland was not to be 
 easily put off the hopeful scent. 
 
 "Why, don't you see," he exclaimed, "the 
 people at the hotel will at least be able to give 
 one a fuller description of the man than anything 
 we have yet. And they may have some idea of 
 where he has gone to ; and, at least, they will 
 have noticed how he was treating Margaret, and 
 that, of course, is what I am most anxious to 
 learn. Again, he may have left other things 
 besides the coat, or there may be documents in 
 the pockets. I have read of such things happening." 
 
 "Yes, in Le Crime de VOpera; and a very good 
 story, too," answered the incredulous Barton; "but 
 I don't fancy that the villain of real life is quite 
 so innocent and careless as the monster of fiction." 
 
 " Everyone knows that murderers are generally 
 detected through some incredible piece of care- 
 lessness," said Maitland ; " and why should this 
 elaborate scoundrel be more fortunate than the 
 rest ? If he did leave the coat, he will scarcely 
 care to go back for it ; and I do not think the 
 chance should be lost, even if it is a poor one. 
 Besides, I 'm doing no good here, and I can do no 
 harm there." 
 
 This was undeniably true ; and though Barton 
 muttered something about " a false scent," he no
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 121 
 
 longer attempted to turn Maitland from his pur- 
 pose. He did, however, with some difficulty, 
 prevent the Fellow of St. Gatien's from purchasing 
 a blonde beard, one of those wigs which simulate 
 baldness, and a pair of blue spectacles. In these 
 disguises, Maitland argued, he would certainly 
 avoid recognition, and so discomfit any mischief 
 planned, by the enemies of Margaret. 
 
 " Yes ; but, on the other hand, you would look 
 exactly like a German professor, and probably be 
 taken for a spy of Bismarck's," said Barton. 
 
 And Maitland reluctantly gave up the idea of 
 disguise. He retained, however, certain astute 
 notions of his own about his plan of operations, 
 and these, unfortunately, he did not communicate 
 to his friend. The fact is, that the long dor- 
 mant romance of Maitland's character was now 
 thoroughly awake, and he began, unconsciously, 
 to enjoy, the adventure. 
 
 His enjoyment did not last very long. The 
 usual troubles of a winter voyage, acting on a 
 dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the 
 guardian of Margaret. But everything — even a 
 period of waiting at the Paris salle d'attente, and a 
 struggle with the cockers at the station (who, for 
 some reason, always decline to take a fare) — 
 must come to an end at last. About dinner-time, 
 Maitland was jolted through the glare of the 
 Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l'Opera. At 
 the Hotel Alsace et Lorraine he determined not 
 to betray himself by too precipitate eagerness. 
 In the first place, he wrote an assumed name in 
 the hotel book, choosing, by an unlucky inspira- 
 tion, the pseudonym of Buchanan. He then 
 ordered dinner in the hotel, and, by way of pro- 
 pitiation, it was a much better dinner than usual 
 that Maitland ordered. Bottles of the higher 
 Bordeaux wines, reposing in beautiful baskets,
 
 122 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 were brought at his command ; for he was deter- 
 mined favourably to impress the people of the 
 house. 
 
 His conduct in this matter was partly deter- 
 mined by the fact that, for the moment, the English 
 were not popular in Paris. 
 
 In fact, as the French newspapers declared, 
 with more truth than they suspected, " Paris was 
 not the place for English people, especially for 
 English women." 
 
 In these international circumstances, then, 
 Maitland believed he showed the wisdom of the 
 serpent when he ordered dinner in the fearless 
 old fashion attributed by tradition to the Milords 
 of the past. But he had reckoned without his 
 appetite. 
 
 A consequence of sea-travel, neither uncommon 
 nor alarming, is the putting away of all desire to 
 eat and drink. As the waiter carried off the 
 untouched Jwrs d'ceuvres (whereof Maitland only 
 nibbled the delicious bread and butter) ; as he 
 bore away the huitres, undiminished in number ; 
 as the bisque proved too much for the guest of the 
 evening ; as he faltered over the soles, and failed 
 to appreciate the cutlets ; as he turned from the 
 noblest cvus (including the widow's crils, those of 
 La Veuve Cliquot), and asked for siphon and fine 
 champagne, the waiter's countenance assumed an air 
 of owl-like sagacity. There was something wrong, 
 the gavcon felt sure, about a man who could order a 
 dinner like Maitland's, and then decline to partake 
 thereof. However, even in a Republican country, 
 you can hardly arrest a man merely because his in- 
 tentions are better than his appetite. The waiter, 
 therefore, contented himself with assuming an 
 imposing attitude, and whispering something to 
 the hall porter. 
 
 The Fellow of St. Gatien's, having dined with
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 123 
 
 the Barmecide regardless of expense, went on (as 
 he hoped) to ingratiate himself with the concierge. 
 From that official he purchased two large cigars, 
 which he did not dream of attempting to enjoy ; 
 and he then endeavoured to enter into conversa- 
 tion, selecting for a topic the state of the contem- 
 porary drama. What would Monsieur advise him 
 to go to see ? Where was Mile. Jane Hading 
 playing? 
 
 Having in this conversation broken the ice (and 
 almost every rule of French grammar), Maitland 
 began to lead up craftily to the great matter — the 
 affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English 
 use the hotel ? Had any of his countrymen been 
 there lately? He remembered that when he left 
 England, a friend of his had asked him to inquire 
 about an article of dress — a great - coat — which he 
 had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab. Could 
 Monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to 
 apply for news about the garment, a coat in 
 peau d'ours ? 
 
 On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking 
 man, who had been loitering in the office of the 
 concierge, moved to the neighbourhood of the door, 
 where he occupied himself in study of a railway- 
 map hanging on the wall. 
 
 The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly ! 
 Monsieur had fallen well in coming to him. Mon- 
 sieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear ? It 
 had been lost by a compatriot of Monsieur's ? 
 Would Monsieur give himself the trouble to follow 
 the porter to the room where lost baggage was kept ? 
 
 Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that 
 he now really was on the trail, followed the porter, 
 and the clerkly man (rather a liberty, thought 
 Maitland) followed him. 
 
 The porter led them to a door marked "private," 
 and they all three entered.
 
 124 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 The clerkly - looking person now courteously 
 motioned Maitland to take a chair. 
 
 The Englishman sat down in some surprise. 
 
 " Where," he asked, " was the bearskin coat ? " 
 
 " Would Monsieur first deign to answer a few 
 inquiries ? Was the coat his own, or a friend's ? " 
 
 " A friend's," said Maitland, and then, beginning 
 to hesitate, admitted that the garment only be- 
 longed to " a man he knew something about." 
 
 " What is his name ? " asked the clerkly man, 
 who was taking notes. 
 
 His name, indeed ! If Maitland only knew that ! 
 His French now began to grow worse and worse 
 in proportion to his flurry. 
 
 Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he 
 did not exactly remember the man's name. It was 
 quite a common name. He had met him for the 
 first time on board the steamer ; but the man was 
 going to Brussels, and, finding that Maitland was 
 on his way to Paris, had asked him to make 
 inquiries. 
 
 Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, 
 asked if English gentlemen usually spoke of per- 
 sons whom they had just met for the first time on 
 board the steamer as their friends ? 
 
 Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed 
 that, as they seemed disposed to give him more 
 trouble than information, he would go and see 
 the play. 
 
 Hereupon the clerkly person requested Monsieur 
 to remember, in his deportment, what was due to 
 Justice ; and when Maitland rose, in a stately 
 way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in 
 front of the door. 
 
 However little of human nature an Englishman 
 may possess, he is rarely unmoved by this kind of 
 treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar, 
 sans phrase, and spun him round, amidst the hor-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 125 
 
 rified clamour of the porter. But the man, without 
 any passion, merely produced and displayed a 
 card, containing a voucher that he belonged to 
 the Secret Police, and calmly asked Maitland for 
 " his papers." 
 
 Maitland had no papers. He had understood 
 that passports were no longer required. 
 
 The detective assured him that passports " spoil 
 nothing." Had Monsieur nothing stating his 
 identity ? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he 
 had artfully entered his name as " Buchanan " on 
 the hotel book, produced his card, on the lower 
 corner of which was printed, St. Gatieu's College. 
 This address puzzled the detective a good deal, 
 while the change of name did not allay his sus- 
 picions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to 
 accompany him into the presence of Justice. As 
 there was no choice, Maitland obtained leave to 
 put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was 
 carried off to what we should call the nearest 
 police-station. Here he was received in a chill 
 bleak room by a formal man, wearing a decora- 
 tion, who (after some private talk with the 
 detective) asked Maitland to explain his whole 
 conduct in the matter of the coat. In the first 
 place the detective's notes on their conversation 
 were read aloud, and it was shown that Maitland 
 had given a false name; had originally spoken of 
 the object of his quest as " the coat of a friend ; " 
 then as "the coat of a man whom he knew some- 
 thing about ; " then as " the coat of a man whose 
 name he did not know ; " and that, finally, he had 
 attempted to go away without offering any satis- 
 factory account of himself. 
 
 All this the philanthropist was constrained to 
 admit ; but he was, not unnaturally, quite unable 
 to submit any explanation of his proceedings. 
 What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that 
 
 9
 
 126 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 his proceedings were a matter of interest and 
 observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all 
 this fuss made about a coat which had, or had 
 not, been left by a traveller at the hotel ? It was 
 perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a 
 souriciere, as the police say, as a trap in which all 
 inquirers after the coat could be captured. Now, 
 if he had been given time (and a French dictionary), 
 Maitland might have set before the Commissaire 
 of Police the whole story of his troubles. He 
 might have begun with the discovery of Shields' 
 body in the snow ; he might have gone on to 
 Margaret's disappearance (enlevement), and to a 
 description of the costume (bearskin coat and 
 all) of the villain who had carried her away. 
 Then he might have described his relations with 
 Margaret, the necessity of finding her, the clue 
 offered by the advertisement in the Times, and his 
 own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up 
 that clue. But it is improbable that this narrative, 
 had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have 
 entirely satisfied the suspicions of the Commissaire 
 of Police. It might even have prejudiced that 
 official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of 
 St. Gatien's had neither the presence of mind nor 
 the linguistic resources necessary to relate the 
 whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a 
 moment's notice, in a cold police-office, to a 
 sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a 
 demand to be allowed to communicate with the 
 English Ambassador ; and that night Maitland of 
 Gatien's passed, for the first time during his blame- 
 less career, in a police-cell. 
 
 It were superfluous to set down in detail all the 
 humiliations endured by Maitland. Do not the 
 newspapers continually ring with the laments of 
 the British citizen who has fallen into the hands 
 of Continental Justice? Are not our countrymen
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 127 
 
 the common butts of German, French, Spanish, 
 and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? 
 When an Englishman appears, do not the foreign 
 police usually arrest him at a venture, and inquire 
 afterwards ? 
 
 Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a 
 good deal more than most of these innocents to 
 deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the Juge 
 d' Instruction told him, without mincing matters, 
 was undeniably louche. 
 
 In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, 
 of the Hotel Alsace et Lorraine, had been very 
 naturally excited by seeing the advertisement 
 about the great -coat in the Times, for he made a 
 study of "the journal of the City." Here was a 
 notice purporting to be signed by himself, and 
 referring to a bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to 
 have been left in his own hotel. A bearskin coat ! 
 The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite, 
 stratagems, and spoils. Then the advertisement 
 was in English, which is, at present and till further 
 notice, the language spoken by the brave Irish. 
 M. Dupin, as a Liberal, had every sympathy with 
 the brave Irish in their noble struggle for what- 
 ever they are struggling for ; but he did not wish 
 his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain 
 cave of Freedom, and the secret storehouse of 
 nitro-glycerine. With a view to elucidating the 
 mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced 
 the police on his premises, and the police had 
 hardly settled down in its affut, when, lo ! a 
 stranger had been captured, in most suspicious 
 circumstances. M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, 
 and his friends envied him the distinction and 
 advertisement which were soon to be his. 
 
 When Maitland appeared, as he did in due 
 course, before the Juge d' Instruction, he attempted 
 to fall back on the obsolete Civis Romanus sum ! 
 
 9 *
 
 128 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 He was an English citizen. He had written 
 to the English Ambassador, or rather to an old 
 St. Gatien's man, an attache of the Embassy, 
 whom he luckily happened to know. But this 
 great ally chanced to be out of town, and his 
 name availed Maitland nothing in his interview 
 with the Juge d' Instruction. That magistrate, 
 sitting with his back to the light, gazed at Mait- 
 land with steady small grey eyes, while the 
 scribble of the pen of the greffier, as he took down 
 the Englishman's deposition, sounded shrill in 
 the bleak torture-chamber of the Law. 
 
 " Your name ?" asked the Juge d'Instruction. 
 
 " Maitland," replied the Fellow of St. Gatien's. 
 
 " You lie ! " said the Juge d'Instruction. " You 
 entered the name of Buchanan in the book of the 
 hotel." 
 
 " My name is on my cards, and on that letter," 
 said Maitland, keeping his temper wonderfully. 
 
 The documents in question lay on a table, as 
 pieces justificatives. 
 
 " These cards, that letter, you have robbed them 
 from some unfortunate person, and have draped 
 (affluble) yourself in the trappings of your victim ! 
 Where is his body ? " 
 
 This was the working hypothesis which the 
 Juge d'Instruction had formed within himself to 
 account for the general conduct and proceedings 
 of the person under examination. 
 
 "Where is whose body?" asked Maitland, in 
 unspeakable surprise. 
 
 " Buchanan," said the Juge d'Instruction. 
 (And to hear the gallantry with which he attacked 
 this difficult name, of itself ensured respect.) 
 "Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable 
 system. Justice is not deceived by your false- 
 hoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She is 
 calm, stern, but merciful. Unbosom yourself
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I2g 
 
 freely" (repandez franchement), "and you may learn 
 that Justice can be lenient. It is your interest to 
 be frank." (II est de votre interet d'etre franc.) 
 
 " But what do you want me to say ? " asked the 
 prevenu. " What is all this pother about a great- 
 coat ? " (Taut de fracas pour un paletot P) 
 
 Maitland was rather proud of this sentence. 
 
 " It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not 
 to answer them," said the Juge d' Instruction. 
 " Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me, 
 Buchanan, why did you ask for the coat at the 
 Hotel Alsace et Lorraine?" 
 
 " In answer to that advertisement in the Times.''' 
 
 "That is false: you yourself inserted the adver- 
 tisement. But, on your own system, bad as it is, 
 what did you want with the coat ? " 
 
 " It belonged to a man who had done me an 
 ill-turn." 
 
 "His name?" 
 
 " I do not know his name : that is just what I 
 wanted to find out. I might have found his tailor's 
 name on the coat, and then have discovered for 
 whom the coat was made/' 
 
 " You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel 
 did not insert the forged advertisement ? " 
 
 " So he says." 
 
 "You doubt his word? You insult France in 
 one of her citizens ! " 
 
 Maitland apologised. 
 
 " Then whom do you suspect of inserting the 
 advertisement, as you deny having done it your- 
 self, for some purpose which does not appear ?" 
 
 " I believe the owner of the coat put in the 
 advertisement." 
 
 " That is absurd. What had he to gain by it ? " 
 
 " To remove me from London, where he is pro- 
 bably conspiring against me at this moment." 
 
 " Buchanan, you trifle with Justice ! "
 
 130 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " I have told you that my name is not Buchanan." 
 
 " Then why did you forge that name in the 
 hotel book ? " 
 
 " I wrote it in the hurry and excitement of the 
 moment : it was incorrect." 
 
 " Why did you lie ? " (Pouvquoi avez vous menti ?) 
 
 Maitland made an irritable movement. 
 
 "You threaten Justice. Your attitude is deplor- 
 able. You are consigned au secret, and will have 
 an opportunity of revising your situation, and 
 replying more fully to the inquiries of Justice." 
 
 So ended Maitland's first and, happily, sole 
 interview with a Juge d'lnstruction. Lord Walter 
 Brixton, his old St. Gatien's pupil, returned 
 from the country on the very day of Maitland's 
 examination. An interview (during which Lord 
 Walter laughed unfeelingly) with his old coach 
 was not refused to the attache, and, in a few hours, 
 after some formalities had been complied with, 
 Maitland was a free man. His pieces justificatives, 
 his letters, cards, and return ticket to Charing 
 Cross were returned to him intact. 
 
 But Maitland determined to sacrifice the privi- 
 leges of the last-named document. 
 
 " I am going straight to Constantinople and the 
 Greek Islands," he wrote to Barton. " Do you 
 know I don't like Paris? My attempt at an in- 
 vestigation has not been a success. I have endured 
 considerable discomfort, and I fear my case will 
 get into the Figaro, and there will be dozens of 
 ' social leaders ' and ' descriptive headers ' about 
 me in all the penny papers." 
 
 Then Maitland gave his banker's address at 
 Constantinople, relinquished the quest of Mar- 
 garet, and for a while, as the Sagas say, "is out 
 of the story."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 13* 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Zhe migbt of Hoventures. 
 
 COLD March wind whistled and 
 yelled round the twisted chimneys of 
 the Hit or Miss. The day had been a 
 trial to every sense. First there would 
 come a long-drawn distant moan, a 
 sigh like that of a querulous woman ; then the sigh 
 grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same 
 woman were working herself up into a passion ; 
 and finally a gust of rainy hail, mixed with dust 
 and small stones, was dashed, like a parting 
 insult, on the windows of the Hit or Miss. Then 
 the shriek died away again into a wail and a 
 moan, and so da capo. 
 
 "Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the 
 pantomime season is over ?" said Barton to Miss 
 Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she 
 perched on the table in the parlour of the Hit or 
 Miss. 
 
 Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, 
 partly to see that Maitland's investment was pro- 
 perly managed, partly because the place was near 
 the scene of his labours ; not least, perhaps, be- 
 cause he had still an unacknowledged hope that 
 light on the mystery of Margaret would come 
 from the original centre of the troubles. 
 
 " I 'm in no hurry to take an engagement," 
 answered the resolute Eliza, holding up and ex- 
 amining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a 
 close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect 
 panoply of other female furniture, all in the latest 
 mode. As the child worked, she looked now and
 
 132 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions. 
 "There's two or three managers in treaty with 
 me," said Eliza. " There 's the Follies and Frivoli- 
 ties down Norwood way, and the Varieties in the 
 'Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and 
 my dresses, that 's what I ask for, and I '11 get it 
 too ! Just now I 'm taking a vacation, and making 
 an honest penny with these things," and she 
 nodded at a little basket full of the wardrobe of 
 dolls. 
 
 " Do you sell the dresses to the toy shops, 
 Eliza?" asked Barton. 
 
 "Yes," said Eliza : "I am doing well with them. 
 I 'm not sure I shan't need to take on some extra 
 hands, by the job, to finish my Easter orders." 
 
 " I 'm glad you are successful," answered Barton. 
 "I say, Eliza!" 
 
 "Yes, Doctor." 
 
 "Would you mind showing me the room upstairs 
 where poor old Shields was sitting the night before 
 he was found in the snow ? " 
 
 It had suddenly occurred to Barton, — it might 
 have occurred to him before, — that this room 
 might be worth examining. 
 
 "We ain't using it now! I'll show you it," 
 said Eliza, leading the way upstairs, and pointing 
 to a door. 
 
 Barton took hold of the handle. 
 
 " Ladies first," he said, making way for Eliza, 
 with a bow. 
 
 " No," came the child's voice, from half-way 
 down the stairs ; " I won't come in ! They say 
 he walks. I 've heard noises there at night." 
 
 A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness 
 of the unused room. Barton struck a match, 
 and seeing a candle on the table, lit it. The 
 room had been left as it was when last it was 
 tenanted. On the table were an empty bottle,
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I33 
 
 two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry 
 colours, blue and red, part of Shields' stock-in- 
 trade. There were, besides, some very sharp 
 needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton 
 recognised. They were the instruments used for 
 tattooing in the islands of the Southern Seas. 
 
 Barton placed the lighted candle beside the 
 saucer, and turned over the needles. Presently 
 his eyes brightened : he chose one out, and exam- 
 ined it closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and 
 was not of bone like the others, but of wood. 
 
 Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood 
 with his knife, and carefully felt the point, which 
 was slightly crusted with a dry brown substance. 
 
 "I thought so," he said aloud, as he placed the 
 needle in a pocket instrument-case: "the stem of 
 the leaf of the coucourite palm ! " 
 
 Then he went downstairs with the candle. 
 
 " Did you see him ? " asked Eliza, with wide- 
 open eyes. 
 
 "Don't be childish, Eliza: there's no one to 
 see. Why is the room left all untidy?" 
 
 " Mother dare not go in !" whispered the child. 
 Then she asked in a low voice, " Did you never 
 hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the 
 night old Shields died in the snow ? " 
 
 "The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised 
 such a clever girl as you should go on thinking 
 about it," said Barton rather sternly. " You were 
 tired and ill, and you fancied it." 
 
 " No, I wasn't," said the child, solemnly. " I 
 never say no more about it to mother, nor to 
 nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it too. 
 I remember it at night in my bed, and I am 
 afraid. Oh ! what 's that ? " 
 
 She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream 
 on the other side of the curtained door that sepa- 
 rated the parlour from the bar of the Hit cv Miss.
 
 134 THE mark OF CAIN. 
 
 Some one seemed to fall against the door, which 
 at the same moment flew open, as if the wind had 
 burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her hand 
 to her breast, her face deadly white and so con- 
 torted by terror as to be unrecognisable, flashed 
 into the room. " Oh, come! oh, come ! " she cried. 
 "She's killing her!" Then the girl vanished as 
 hurriedly as she had appeared. It was all over in 
 a moment : the vivid impression of a face mad- 
 dened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. 
 In that moment Barton had seized his hat, and 
 sped as hard as he could run after the girl. He 
 found her breaking through a knot of loafers in 
 the bar, who were besieging her with questions. 
 She turned and saw Barton. 
 
 " Come, doctor, come ! " she screamed again, 
 and fled out into the night, crossing another girl 
 who was apparently speeding on the same errand. 
 Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first 
 messenger, and hear her footfall ring on the pave- 
 ment. Up a long street, down another, and then 
 into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a 
 swinging sign of the old-fashioned sort, and 
 through a doorway. Barton, following, found 
 himself for the first time within the portals of The 
 Old English Bunhonse. 
 
 The wide passage (the house was old) was 
 crowded with girls, wildly excited, weeping, 
 screaming, and some of them swearing. They 
 were pressed so thick round a door at the end of 
 the hall, that Barton could scarcely thrust his way 
 through them, dragging one aside, shouldering 
 another : it was a matter of life and death. 
 
 "Oh, she's been at the drink, and she's killed 
 her! she's killed her! I heard her fall!" one of 
 the frightened girls was exclaiming with hysterical 
 iteration. 
 
 " Let me pass! " shouted Barton; and reaching
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 135 
 
 the door at last, he turned the handle and pushed. 
 The door was locked. 
 
 " Give me room," he cried, and the patrons of 
 The Bunhouse yielding place a little, Barton took a 
 short run, and drove with all the weight of his 
 shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly 
 with a crash, and he was hurled into the room by 
 his own impetus and by the stress of the girls 
 behind him. 
 
 What he beheld was more like some dreadful 
 scene of ancient tragedy, than the spectacle of an 
 accident or a crime of modern life. 
 
 By the windy glare of a dozen gas jets (red and 
 shaken like the flame of blown torches by the 
 rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane) 
 Barton saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded 
 floor. 
 
 One of her arms made a pillow for her head ; 
 her soft dark hair, unfastened, half hid her, like a 
 veil ; the other arm lay loose by her side ; her lips 
 were white, her face was bloodless ; but there was 
 blood on the deep blue folds about the bosom, and 
 on the floor. At the further side of this girl, — who 
 was dead, or seemingly dead, — sat, on a low stool, 
 a woman, in a crouching cat-like attitude, quite 
 silent and still. The knife with which she had 
 done the deed was dripping in her hand ; the noise 
 of the broken door and of the entering throng 
 had not disturbed her. 
 
 For a moment even Barton's rapidity of action 
 and resolution was paralysed by the terrible and 
 strange vision that he beheld. He stared with all 
 his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a 
 vision, dreadful even to one who saw death every 
 day. Then the modern spirit awoke in him. 
 
 "Fetch a policeman," he whispered to one of 
 the crowding, frightened troop of girls. 
 
 " There is a copper at the door, sir ; here he
 
 I36 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 comes," said Susan, the young woman who had 
 called Barton from the Hit or Miss. 
 
 The helmet of the guardian of the peace 
 appeared welcome above the throng. 
 
 And still the pale woman in white sat as 
 motionless as the stricken girl at her feet — as if 
 she had not been an actor, but a figure in a tableau. 
 
 " Policeman," said Barton, " I give that woman 
 in charge for an attempt at murder. Take her to 
 the station." 
 
 "I don't like the looks of her," whispered the 
 policeman. " I 'd better get her knife from her 
 first, sir." 
 
 " Be quick, whatever you do, and have the 
 house cleared. I can't look after the wounded 
 girl in this crowd." 
 
 Thus addressed, the policeman stole round 
 towards the seated woman, whose eyes had never 
 deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of 
 her victim. Barton stealthily drew near, out- 
 flanking her on the other side. 
 
 They were just within arm's reach of the mur- 
 deress when she leaped with incredible suddenness 
 to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and 
 lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her 
 shoulders. Then she raised her right hand ; the 
 knife flashed and dropped like lightning into her 
 breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl 
 whom she had stricken. 
 
 " By George, she 's gone ! " cried the policeman. 
 Barton pushed past him, and laid his hand on the 
 woman's heart. She stirred once, was violently 
 shaken with the agony of death, and so passed 
 away, carrying into silence her secret and her 
 story. 
 
 Mr. Cranley's hopes had been, at least partially, 
 fulfilled. 
 
 " Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start !"
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 137 
 
 remarked the policeman, sententiously ; and then, 
 while Barton was sounding and stanching the 
 wound of the housekeeper's victim, and applying 
 such styptics as he had within reach, the guardian 
 of social order succeeded in clearing The Buuhouse 
 of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending 
 a message (by the direction of the girl who had 
 summoned Barton, and who seemed not devoid of 
 sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that 
 lady was being expected, the girl, who now took a 
 kind of subordinate lead, was employed by Barton 
 in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, 
 and in generally restoring order. 
 
 When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine's house with Barton's brief note, and 
 with his own curt statement that " murder was 
 being done at The Buuhouse," he found the Lady 
 Superior rehearsing for a play. Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room repre- 
 sentation of Nitonche, and the terrible news found 
 her in one of the costumes of the heroine. With 
 a very brief explanation (variously misunderstood 
 by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine hurried off, "just as she was," and 
 astonished Barton (who had never seen her before) 
 by arriving at The Buuhouse as a rather conventional 
 shepherdess, in pink and grey, rouged, and with 
 a fluffy flaxen wig. The versatility with which 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all 
 worlds occasionally led her into inconsequences of 
 this description. 
 
 But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine had also, not only a kind heart, but a 
 practical mind. In five minutes she had heard 
 the tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her 
 wig, and settled herself as nurse by the bedside 
 of Margaret. The girl's wound, as Barton was 
 happily able to assure her, was by no means
 
 I38 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 really dangerous ; for the point of the weapon had 
 been turned, and had touched no vital part. But 
 the prodigious force with which the blow had 
 followed on a scene of violent reproaches and 
 insane threats (described by one of the young 
 women) had affected most perilously a constitution 
 already weakened by sickness and trouble. Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most responsible 
 of The Bnnhouse girls, announced her intention to 
 sit up all night with the patient. Barton — who 
 was moved, perhaps, as much by the beauty of 
 the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as 
 by professional duty — remained in attendance till 
 nearly dawn, when the Lady Superior insisted 
 that he should go home and take some rest. As 
 the danger for the patient was not immediate, but 
 lay in the chances of fever, Barton allowed himself 
 to be persuaded, and, at about five in the morning, 
 he let himself out of The Bnnhouse, and made 
 sleepily for his lodgings. But sleep that night 
 was to be a stranger to him, and his share of 
 adventures — which, like sorrows, never " come as 
 single spies, but in battalions " — was by no means 
 exhausted. 
 
 The night, through which the first glimpse of 
 dawn just peered, was extremely cold ; and Barton, 
 who had left his great-coat in the Hit or Miss, 
 stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his 
 pockets, his hat tight on his head, and with his 
 pipe for company. 
 
 " There 's the grey beginning, Zooks," he mut- 
 tered to himself, in half-conscious quotation. 
 He was as drowsy as a man can be who still steps 
 along and keeps an open eye. The streets were 
 empty, a sandy wind was walking them alone, 
 and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the lamp- 
 lights dimly reflected in the growing blue of 
 morning. Barton was just passing the locked
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 139 
 
 doors of the Hit or Miss, — for he preferred to go 
 homeward by the riverside, — when a singular 
 sound, or mixture of sounds, from behind the 
 battered old hoarding close by, attracted his atten- 
 tion. In a moment he was as alert as if he had 
 not passed a nitit blanche. The sound at first 
 seemed not very unlike that which a traction 
 engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, 
 may make before quite getting up steam. Then 
 there was plainly discernible a great whirring and 
 flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged 
 in its economy, and was labouring " without a 
 conscience or an aim." Whirr, whirr, flap, thump, 
 came the sounds, and then, mixed with and domi- 
 nating them, the choking scream of a human 
 being in agony. But, strangely enough, the scream 
 appeared to be half-checked and suppressed, as if 
 the sufferer, whoever he might be, and whatever 
 his torment, were striving with all his might to 
 endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries 
 in the rooms of the hospital. To such sounds the 
 Question Chambers of old prisons and palaces 
 must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling 
 with a half-superstitious dread ; so moving, in 
 that urban waste, were the accents of pain. 
 
 Then whirr, flap, came the noise again, and 
 again the human note was heard, and was followed 
 by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it 
 was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse- 
 beats, — the time during which the torturing crank 
 revolved, and was answered by the hard -wrung 
 exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the 
 palings of the hoarding : they were a couple of 
 feet higher than his head. Then he sprang up, 
 caught the top at a place where the rusty-pointed 
 nails were few and broken, and next moment, with 
 torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within 
 the palisade.
 
 140 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things — 
 big, black, formless — were dimly seen ; but nearer 
 the hoarding than the middle of the waste open 
 ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. 
 Great fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was 
 running at prodigious speed, flaming vapours fled 
 hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in 
 some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted 
 several feet from the ground, now dashed to earth 
 again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth 
 of the flying wheel. 
 
 Barton did not pause long in empty speculation ; 
 he shouted, "Hold on!" or some other such 
 encouragement, and ran in the direction of the 
 sufferer. But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, 
 piles of wood, old baskets, outworn hats, for- 
 saken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste 
 land, the movement of the flying fans began to 
 slacken, the wheels ran slowly down, and, with 
 a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased 
 moving, as a heart stops beating. Then, just when 
 all was over, a voice came from the crumpled 
 mass of humanity in the centre of the hideous 
 mechanism : 
 
 " Don't come here ; stop, on your peril ! I am 
 armed, and I will shoot ! " 
 
 The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible. 
 
 Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes 
 (the old Irish duelling days being over) at least to 
 know why he is to be shot at. 
 
 "What's the matter with you?" he said. 
 "What on earth are you doing? How can you 
 talk about shooting ? Have you a whole bone in 
 your body ? " 
 
 To this the only reply was another groan ; then 
 silence. 
 
 By this time there was a full measure of the 
 light "which London takes the day to be," and
 
 \ 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 141 
 
 Barton had a fair view of his partner in this 
 dialogue. 4 
 
 He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak 
 and distorted like a victim of the rack, — scattered, 
 so to speak, — in a posture inconceivably out of 
 drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The 
 man's head was lowest, and rested on an old 
 battered box ; his middle was supported by a 
 beam of the engine ; one of his legs was elevated 
 on one of the fans, the other hung disjointedly in 
 the air. The man was strangely dressed in a 
 close-fitting suit of cloth, — something between the 
 uniform of bicycle clubs and the tights affected by 
 acrobats. Long, thin, grey locks fell back from a 
 high yellow forehead : there was blood on his 
 mouth and about his beard. 
 
 Barton drew near and touched him : the man 
 only groaned. 
 
 " How am I to help you out of this?" said the 
 surgeon, carefully examining his patient, as he 
 might now be called. A little close observation 
 showed that the man's arms were strapped by 
 buckles into the fans, while one of his legs was 
 caught up in some elastic coils of the mechanism. 
 _ With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the 
 victim, whose stifled groans proved at once the 
 extent of his sufferings and of his courage. 
 
 Finally, the man was free from the machine, 
 and Barton discovered that, as far as a rapid 
 investigation could show, there were no fatal 
 injuries done, though a leg, an arm, and several 
 ribs were fractured, and there were many con- 
 tusions. 
 
 " Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, 
 while I go round to the police-office and get men 
 and a stretcher," said Barton. 
 
 The man held up one appealing hand ; the other 
 was paralysed. 
 
 10
 
 1^2 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 "First hide all this" he murmured, moving his 
 head so as to indicate the fragments of his engine. 
 They lay all confused, a heap of spars, cogs, wheels, 
 fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of 
 mechanics. " Don't let them know a word about 
 it," he said. " Say I had an accident — that I was 
 sleep-walking, and fell from a window, — say any- 
 thing you like, but promise to keep my secret. In 
 a week," he murmured dreamily, "it would have 
 been complete. It is the second time I have just 
 missed success and fame." 
 
 " I have not an idea what your secret may be," 
 said Barton ; " but here goes for the machine." 
 
 And, while the wounded man watched him with 
 piteous and wistful eyes, he rapidly hid different 
 fragments of the mechanism beneath and among 
 the heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for 
 purposes of concealment, meritorious. 
 
 "Are you sure you can find them all again?" 
 asked the victim of misplaced ingenuity. 
 
 "Oh yes, all right," said Barton. 
 
 "Then you must get me to the street before 
 you bring any help. If they find me here 
 they will ask questions, and my secret will come 
 
 out." 
 
 " But how on earth am I to get you to the street ? 
 Barton enquired, very naturally. " Even if you 
 could bear being carried, I could not lift you over 
 the hoarding." 
 
 " I can bear anything,— I will bear anything," 
 said the man. " Look in my breast, and you will 
 find a key of a door in the palings." 
 
 Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round 
 the neck of the sufferer by a leather shoe-tie, he 
 discovered, sure enough, a kind of skeleton-key in 
 strong wire. 
 
 " With that you can open the gate, and get me 
 into the street," said the crushed man ; " but be
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 143 
 
 very caretul not to open the door while anyone is 
 passing." 
 
 He only got out these messages very slowly, and 
 after intervals of silence broken by groans. 
 
 " Wait ! one thing more," he said, as Barton 
 stooped to take him in his arms. " I may faint 
 from pain. My address is, Paterson's Rents, 
 hard by ; my name is Winter." Then, after a 
 pause, " I can pay for a private room at the 
 infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third 
 plank from the end in the left-hand corner by 
 the window, and you will find enough. Now ! " 
 
 Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor 
 man, mere bag of bones (and broken bones) as 
 he was. 
 
 The horrible pain that the man endured Barton 
 could imagine, yet he dared not hurry, for the 
 ground was strewn with every sort of pit-fall. At 
 last — it seemed hours to Barton, it must have 
 been an eternity to the sufferer — the hoarding was 
 reached, and, after listening earnestly, Barton 
 opened the door, peered out, saw that the coast 
 was clear, deposited his burden on the pavement, 
 and flew to the not distant police-station. 
 
 He was not absent long, and returning with four 
 men and a stretcher, he found, of course, quite a 
 large crowd grouped round the place where he 
 had left his charge. The milkman was there, 
 several shabby women, one or two puzzled police- 
 men, three cabmen (though no wizard could have 
 called up a cab at that hour and place had he 
 wanted to catch a train) ; there were riverside 
 loafers, workmen going to their labour, and a 
 lucky penny-a-liner with his "tissue" and pencil. 
 
 Pushing his way through those gapers, Barton 
 found, as he expected, that his patient had fainted. 
 He aided the policemen to place him on the 
 stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary 
 
 10 *
 
 i 4 4 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 (how common a sight is that motionless body on a 
 stretcher in the streets !), explained as much of the 
 case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, 
 and then, at last, returned to his rooms and a bath, 
 puzzling over the mystery. 
 
 " By Jove ! " he said, as he helped himself to a 
 devilled wing of chicken at breakfast, " I believe 
 the poor beggar had been experimenting with a 
 Flying Machine ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 % patient 
 
 DOCTOR, especially a doctor 
 actively practising among the poor 
 and laborious, soon learns to take 
 the incidents of his profession rather 
 calmly. Barton had often been called 
 revel had ended in suicide or death ; 
 had never before seen a man caught 
 
 in when a 
 
 and if he 
 
 in a flying machine, he had been used to heal 
 
 wounds quite as dreadful caused by engines of a 
 
 more familiar nature. 
 
 Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his 
 round of visits on the day after his adventurous 
 vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived 
 that the distress and confusion at The Bunhott.se were 
 very great. The police and the gloomy attendants 
 on Death were in the place ; Mrs. St. John Deloraine 
 had to see many official people, to answer many 
 disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way 
 extremely from the consequences of her beneficent 
 enterprise. But she displayed a coolness and 
 business-like common sense worthy of a less ver-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I45 
 
 satile philanthropist, and found time, amid the 
 temporary ruin of her work, to pay due attention 
 to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl 
 before, taking her very much on trust, and being 
 preoccupied with various schemes of social enjoy- 
 ment. But now she was struck by her beauty 
 and her educated manner, though that, to be sure, 
 was amply accounted for by the explanations 
 offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine was conceiving a project 
 of perpetual friendship, and had made up her 
 mind to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let 
 us say, niece and companion. The girl was too 
 refined to cope with the rough-and-ready young 
 patronesses of The Bunhouse. 
 
 If the lady's mind was even more preoccupied 
 by the survivor in the hideous events of the even- 
 ing than by the tragedy itself and the dead woman, 
 Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new 
 patient — not that he was a flirt or a sentimen- 
 talist. Even in the spring Barton's fancy did not 
 lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one 
 of those " amatorious " young men (as Milton 
 says, perhaps at too great length) who cannot see 
 a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. 
 Barton was not so prodigal of his affections; yet it 
 were vain to deny that, as he went his rather drowsy 
 round of professional visits, his ideas were more 
 apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, 
 than to the man who had been rescued from the 
 machinery. The man t was old, yellow, withered, 
 and, in Barton's private opinion, more of a lunatic 
 charlatan than a successful inventor. The. girl was 
 young, beautiful, and interesting enough, apart 
 from her wound, to demand and secure a place in 
 any fancy absolutely free. 
 
 It was no more than Barton's actual duty to 
 call at The Old English Bunhouse in the afternoon.
 
 146 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St. John Deloraine, 
 who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors 
 of the night. She had turned all her young cus- 
 tomers out, and had stuck up a paper bearing a 
 legend to the effect that The Old English Bunhouse 
 was closed for the present and till further notice. 
 A wistful crowd was drawn up on the opposite 
 side of the street, and was staring at The Bunhouse. 
 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it 
 might almost be said, with open arms. She had 
 by this time, of course, laid aside the outward 
 guise of Nitouche, and was dressed like other 
 ladies, but better. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Barton," she exclaimed, "your 
 patient is doing very well indeed. She will be 
 crazy with delight when she hears that you have 
 called." 
 
 Barton could not help being pleased at this 
 intelligence, even when he had discounted it as 
 freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine taught her friends to do. 
 
 " Do you think she is able to see me ? " he asked. 
 
 " I '11 run to her room and inquire," said Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine, fleeting nimbly up the steep 
 stairs, and leaving, like Astraea, as described by 
 Charles Lamb's friend, a kind of rosy track or 
 glow behind her from the chastened splendour of 
 her very becoming hose. 
 
 Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady 
 of The Bunhouse returned with the message that he 
 might accompany her into the presence of the 
 invalid. 
 
 A very brief interview satisfied him that his 
 patient was going on even better than he had 
 hoped ; also that she possessed very beautiful and 
 melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little 
 kindly, and asked whether Mr. Cranley had sent 
 to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine an-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 147 
 
 swered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the 
 negative ; and when they had left Margaret (Miss 
 Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called her), 
 he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be 
 about whom the girl had spoken. 
 
 "Well," replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, "it 
 was through Mr. Cranley that I engaged both 
 Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom 
 I can't think of without shuddering. The inquest 
 is to be held to-morrow. It is too dreadful when 
 these things, that have been only names, come 
 home to one. Now I really do not like to think 
 hardly of anybody, but I must admit that Mr. 
 Cranley has quite misled me about the house- 
 keeper. He gave her an excellent character, espe- 
 cially for sobriety, and till yesterday I had no fault 
 to find with her. Then, the girls say, she became 
 quite wild and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe 
 that this is the first time she yielded to that horrid 
 temptation. Don't you think it was odd of Mr. 
 Cranley ? And I sent round a messenger with a 
 note to his rooms, but it was returned, marked, 
 ' Has left ; address not known.' I don't know 
 what has become of him. Perhaps the house- 
 keeper could have told us, but the unfortunate 
 woman is beyond reach of questions." 
 
 " Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector 
 of St. Medard's in Chelsea?" asked Barton. 
 
 " No ; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of 
 the Earl of Birkenhead. He was a great friend 
 of mine." 
 
 "Mr. Thomas Cranley!" exclaimed Barton, 
 with an expression of face which probably spoke 
 at least three volumes, and these of a highly 
 sensational character. 
 
 "Now, please," cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, 
 clasping her hands in a pretty attitude of entreaty, 
 like a recording angel hesitating to enter the pec-
 
 I48 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 cadillo of a favourite saint, " please don't say you 
 know anything against Mr. Cranley. I am aware 
 that he has many enemies." 
 
 Barton was silent for a minute. He had that 
 good old schoolboy feeling about not telling tales 
 out of school, which is so English and so unknown 
 in France; but, on the other side, he could scarcely 
 think it right to leave a lady of invincible inno- 
 cence at the mercy of a confirmed scoundrel. 
 
 " Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing 
 to have to say ; but really, if you ask me, I should 
 remark that Mr. Cranley's enemies are of his own 
 making, i" would not go to him for a girl's char- 
 acter, I 'm sure. But I thought he had disap- 
 peared from Society." 
 
 " So he had. He told me that there was a 
 conspiracy against him, and that I was one of the 
 few people who, he felt sure, would never desert 
 him. And I never would. I never turn my back 
 on my friends." 
 
 " If there was a conspiracy," said Barton, " I 
 am the ringleader in it ; for, as you ask me, I 
 must assure you, on my honour, that I detected 
 Mr. Cranley in the act of trying to cheat some 
 very young men at cards. I would not have 
 mentioned it for the world," he added, almost 
 alarmed at the expression of pain and terror in 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine's face ; " but you wished 
 to be told. And I could not honestly leave you 
 in the belief that he is a man to be trusted. What 
 he did when I saw him was only what all who 
 knew him well would have expected. And his 
 treatment of you, in the matter of that woman's 
 character, was," cried Barton, growing indignant 
 as he thought of it, " one of the very basest things 
 I ever heard of. I had seen that woman before : 
 she was not fit to be entrusted with the care of 
 girls. She was at one time very well known."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 149 
 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine's face had passed through 
 every shade of expression — doubt, shame, and in- 
 dignation ; but now it assumed an air of hope. 
 
 " Margaret has always spoken so well of him," 
 she said half to herself. " He was always very kind 
 to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter of 
 a humble acquaintance." 
 
 " Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once," 
 said Barton; "but as to his general character, it is 
 certain that it was on a par with the trap he laid 
 for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You 
 must never let him get the poor girl back into his 
 hands." 
 
 " Certainly not," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, 
 with conviction in her voice ; " and now I must 
 go back to her, and see whether she wants any- 
 thing. Do you think I may soon move her to my 
 own house, in Cheyne Walk ? It is not far, and 
 she will be so much more comfortable there." 
 
 " The best thing you can do," said Barton ; 
 " and be sure you send for me if you want me, or 
 if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I 
 am quite ready to meet him anywhere." 
 
 " You will call to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Certainly, about this time," said Barton ; and 
 he kept his promise assiduously, calling often. 
 
 A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost 
 restored to health, and in a black tea-gown, the 
 property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying 
 indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne 
 Walk. She was watching the struggle between 
 the waning daylight and the fire, when the door 
 opened, and the servant announced "Dr. Barton." 
 
 Margaret held forth a rather languid hand. 
 
 " I 'm so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out," 
 she said. " She is at a soap-bubble party. I 
 wish / could go. It is so long since I saw any 
 children, or had any fun."
 
 150 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remem- 
 bering the reason why she should not attend soap- 
 bubble parties. 
 
 " I 'in selfish enough to be glad you could not 
 go," said Barton ; " for then I should have missed 
 you. But why do you sigh ? " 
 
 " I have had a good many things to make me 
 unhappy," said Margaret, "in addition to my — to 
 my accident. You must not think I am always 
 bewailing myself. But perhaps you know that I 
 lost my father, just before I entered Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine's service, and then my whole course of 
 life was altered." 
 
 " I am very sorry for you," said Barton simply. 
 He did not know what else to say; but he felt 
 more than his conventional words indicated, and 
 perhaps he looked as if he felt it, and more. 
 
 Margaret was still too weak to bear an expres- 
 sion of sympathy, and tears came into her eyes, 
 followed by a blush on her pale thin cheeks. She 
 was on the point of breaking down. 
 
 There is nothing in the world so trying to a 
 young man as to see a girl crying. A wild impulse 
 to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton's 
 mind, before he said awkwardly again — 
 
 " I can't tell you how sorry I am ; I wish _ I 
 could do anything for you. Can't I help you in 
 any way ? You must not give up so early in the 
 troubles of life ; and then, who knows but yours, 
 having begun soon, are nearly over ? " 
 
 Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to 
 let him see that they were over, as far as one 
 mortal can do as much for another. 
 
 " They have been going on so long," said Mar- 
 garet. " I have had such a wandering life, and 
 such changes." 
 
 Barton would have given much to be able to ask 
 for more information ; but more was not offered.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 151 
 
 " Let us think of the future," he said. " Have 
 you any idea about what you mean to do ? " 
 
 " Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She 
 wishes me to stay with her always. But I am 
 puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don't know what 
 he would like me to do. He seems to have gone 
 abroad." 
 
 Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley's 
 name. 
 
 " Had you known him long ? " he asked. 
 
 " No ; for a very short time only. But he was 
 an old friend of my father's, and had promised 
 him to take care of me. He took me away from 
 school, and he gave me a start in life." 
 
 " But surely he might have found something 
 more worthy of you, of your education," said 
 Barton. 
 
 " What can a girl do ? " answered Margaret. 
 " We know so little. I could hardly even have 
 taught very little children. They thought me 
 
 dreadfully backward at school, — at least, Miss 
 
 I mean, the teachers thought me backward." 
 
 " I m sure you know as much as anyone 
 should," said Barton, indignantly. "Were you 
 at a nice school ? " he added. 
 
 He had been puzzling himself for many days 
 over Margaret's history. She seemed to have had 
 at least the ordinary share of education, and 
 knowledge of the world ; and yet he had found her 
 occupying a menial position at a philanthropic 
 bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependant 
 of Mrs. St. John Deloraine's, though there was a 
 staunchness in that lady's character which made 
 her patronage not precarious. 
 
 "There were some nice girls at it," answered 
 Margaret, without committing herself. 
 
 Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent 
 marriages, but no such thing as a delightful mar-
 
 152 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 riage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an 
 abstract truth, that good schools exist ; but few- 
 would allow that any place of education is "nice." 
 
 " It is really getting quite late," Barton observed 
 reluctantly. He liked to watch the girl, whose 
 beauty, made wan by illness, received just a touch 
 of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He 
 liked to talk to her ; in fact, this was his most 
 interesting patient by far. It would be miserably 
 black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware ; 
 and non-paying patients would be importunate in 
 proportion to their poverty. The poor are often 
 the most exacting of hypochondriacs. 
 
 Margaret noticed his reluctance to go contend- 
 ing with a sense of what he owed to propriety. 
 
 " I am sure you must want tea ; but I don't 
 like to ring. It is so short a time since I wore an 
 apron and a cap and the rest of it myself at The 
 Bunhouse, that I am afraid to ask the servants to 
 do anything for me. They must dislike me : it is 
 very natural." 
 
 " It is not natural at all," said Barton with con- 
 viction ; "perfectly monstrous, on the other hand." 
 This little compliment eclipsed the effect of fire- 
 light on the girl's face. " Suppose / ring," he 
 added, " and then you can say, when Mary says 
 'Did you ring, miss?' 'No, I didn't ring; but 
 as you are here, Mary, would you mind bringing 
 tea?'" 
 
 " I don't know if that would be quite honest," 
 said Margaret, doubtfully. 
 
 " A pious fraud — a drawing-room comedy," said 
 Barton : " have we rehearsed it enough ? " 
 
 Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of 
 private theatricals was played out, though one of 
 the artists had some difficulty (as amateurs often 
 have) in subduing an inclination to giggle. 
 
 " Now this is quite perfect," said Barton, when
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 153 
 
 he had been accommodated with a large piece of 
 plum-cake. " This is the very kind of cake which 
 we specially prohibit our patients to touch ; and 
 so near dinner-time, too ! There should be a new 
 proverb, ' Physician, diet thyself.' You see, we don't 
 all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a 
 piece of dry toast." 
 
 " Mrs. St. John Deloraine has never taken up 
 that kind of life," said Margaret. 
 
 " She tries a good many new things," Barton 
 remarked. 
 
 " Yes ; but she is the best woman in the world ! " 
 answered the girl. " Oh, if you knew what a 
 comfort it is to be with a lady again ! " And she 
 shuddered as she remembered her late chaperon. 
 
 " I wonder if some day, — you won't think me 
 very rude ? " asked Barton,- — " you would mind 
 telling me a little of your history?" 
 
 " Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about 
 it," answered Margaret ; " and a great deal is 
 very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, 
 and everything is so quiet here, and safe and 
 peaceful, that it frightens me to think of things 
 that have happened, or may happen." 
 
 " They shall never happen, if you will trust 
 me," cried Barton, when a carriage was heard to 
 stop at the gateway of the garden outside. 
 
 " Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last," cried 
 Margaret, starting to run to the window ; but she 
 was so weak that she tripped, and would have 
 fallen had Barton not caught her lightly. 
 
 " Oh, how stupid you must think me ! " she said, 
 blushing. And Barton thought he had never seen 
 anything so pretty. 
 
 " Once for all, I don't think you stupid, or back- 
 ward, or anything else that you call yourself." 
 
 But at that very moment the door opened, and 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine entered, magnificently
 
 i54 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of 
 hospitality and content with existence into the 
 
 room. 
 
 "Oh, you are here!" she cried, "and I have 
 almost missed you. Now you must stay to dinner. 
 You need not dress ; we are all alone, Margaret 
 and I." 
 
 So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochon- 
 driacs, eager for his society (which was always 
 cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in 
 vain. It was an excellent dinner ; and, on the 
 wings of the music Mrs. St. John Deloraine was 
 playing in the front drawing-room, two happy 
 hours passed lightly over Barton and Margaret, 
 into the backward, where all hours — good and 
 evil — abide, remembered or forgotten. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Bnotber ipatient. 
 
 " Des ailesl des ailesl des ailes! 
 Comme dans le chant de Ruckert." 
 
 Theophile Gautier. 
 
 O you think a flying machine im- 
 possible, sir, and me, I presume, 
 a fanatic ? Well, well, you have 
 Eusebius with you. ' Such an one,' 
 he says, — -meaning me, and inventors 
 like me, — ' is a little crazed with the humours of 
 melancholy.' " 
 
 The speaker was the man whom Barton had 
 rescued from the cogs and wheels and springs of 
 an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be 
 interested in the courage and perseverance of this
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 155 
 
 sufferer, whom he was visiting in hospital. The 
 young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in 
 Paterson's Rents, and had found it, as he more 
 or less expected, the conventional den of the 
 needy inventor. Our large towns are full of such 
 persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities 
 and of civilisation — the modern seekers for the 
 Philosopher's Stone. At the end of a vista of 
 dreams they behold the great Discovery made 
 perfect, and themselves the winners of fame and 
 of wealth incalculable. 
 
 For the present, most of these visionaries are 
 occupied with electricity. The)' intend to make 
 the lightning a domestic slave in every house, and 
 to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from 
 the aspect of Winter's den in Paterson's Rents, 
 it was easy to read that his heart was set on a 
 more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, 
 home-made, which lined every Avail, were packed 
 with tattered books on mechanics, and especially 
 on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of the 
 fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with 
 volumes in better condition, purchased at a larger 
 cost. Here — among the litter of tattered pamphlets 
 and well-thumbed Proceedings oi the Linnean and the 
 Aeronautic Society of Great Britain— here were 
 Fredericus Hermannus' De Arte Volandi, and Cay- 
 ley's works, and Hatton Turner's Astra Castva, and 
 the Voyage to the Moon of Cyrano de Bergerac, and 
 Bishop Wilkins's Dcedalus, and the same sanguine 
 prelate's Mercury, The Secret Messenger. Here were 
 Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of 
 the classics, mostly in French translations, and a 
 score of lucubrations by French and other in- 
 ventors, — Ponton d'Amecourt, Borelli, Chabrier, 
 Girard, and Marey. 
 
 Even if his books had not shown the direction 
 of the new patient's mind — (a man is known by
 
 I56 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 his books at least as much as by his companions, 
 and companions Winter had none) — even if the 
 shelves had not spoken clearly, the models and 
 odds-and-ends in the room would have proclaimed 
 him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his 
 library, and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes 
 and pamphlets and periodicals, a quantity of mis- 
 cellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the ceiling. 
 
 Barton, who was more than commonly tall, 
 found his head being buffeted by big preserved 
 wings of birds and other flying things — from the 
 sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery 
 covering of the bat. From the ceiling, too, hung 
 models, cleverly constructed in various materials ; 
 and here — a cork with quills stuck into it, and with 
 a kind of drill-bow — was the little flying model 
 of Sir George Cayley. The whole place, dusty 
 and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds' 
 feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. 
 When Barton left it, his mind was made up as to 
 the nature of Winter's secret, or delusion ; and 
 when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he 
 was not surprised either by his smattered learning 
 or by his golden dreams. 
 
 "Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt," 
 Winter went on with his eager talk. "An acute 
 man, — rather too acute, don't you think, for a 
 Father of the Church ? That habit he got into 
 of smashing the arguments of the heathen, gave 
 him a kind of flippancy in talking of high matters." 
 
 " Such as flying ?" put in Barton. 
 
 " Yes ; such as our great aim, — the aim of all the 
 ages, I may call it. What does Bishop Wilkins 
 say, sir ? Why, he says, • I doubt not but that 
 flying in the air may be easily effected by a dili- 
 gent and ingenious artificer.' ' Diligent,' I may 
 say, I have been ; as to ' ingenious,' I leave the 
 verdict to others."
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 157 
 
 11 Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting? " 
 asked Barton, to humour his man. 
 
 "Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter 
 Wilkins is the hero of a mere romance, in which, 
 it is true, we meet with women — Goovies he calls 
 them — endowed with the power of flight. But 
 they were born so. We get no help from Peter 
 Wilkins : a mere dreamer." 
 
 " It doesn't seem to be so easy as the Bishop 
 fancies ? " remarked Barton, leading him on. 
 
 " No, sir," cried Winter, all his aches and pain 
 forgotten, and his pale face flushed with the delight 
 of finding a listener who did not laugh at him. 
 " No, sir ; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not 
 a practical man. But look at what he says about 
 the weight of your flying machine ! Can anything 
 be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most 
 recent researches, and the authority of Professor 
 Pettigrew Bell himself. You remember the iron 
 fly made by Regimontanus of Nuremberg ? " 
 
 "The iron fly!" murmured Barton. "I can't 
 say I do." 
 
 " You will find a history of it in Ramus. This 
 fly would leap from the hands of the great Regi- 
 montanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his 
 guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, 
 return and repose on the finger of its maker." 
 
 "You don't mean to say you believe that?" 
 asked Barton. 
 
 " Why not, sir ; why not ? Did not Archytas of 
 Tarentum, one of Plato's acquaintances, construct 
 a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous ? And 
 the same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned 
 an eagle, which, by way of triumph, did fly out of 
 the city to meet Charles V. But where was I ? 
 Oh, at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the 
 iron fly of Regimontanus, because the material 
 was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in 
 
 11
 
 158 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 accordance with the best modern authorities, 
 that the weight is no hindrance whatever, if pro- 
 portional to the motive power. A flying machine, 
 says Professor Bell, in the Encyclopedia Britannica 
 — (you will not question the authority of the Ency- 
 clopedia Britannica ?) — a flying machine should be 'a 
 compact, moderately heavy, and powerful struc- 
 ture.' There, you see, the Bishop was right." 
 
 "Yours was deuced powerful," remarked Barton. 
 " I did not expect to see two limbs of you left to- 
 gether." 
 
 "It is powerful, or rather it was," answered 
 Winter, with a heavy sigh; "but it's all to do 
 over again — all to do over again ! Yet it was a 
 noble specimen. ' The passive surface was reduced 
 to a minimum,' as the learned author in the Ency- 
 clopedia recommends." 
 
 " By Jove ! the passive surface was jolly near 
 reduced to a mummy. You were the passive sur- 
 face, as far as I could see." 
 
 " Don't laugh at me, please sir, after you 've 
 been so kind. All the rest laugh at me. You 
 can't think what a pleasure it has been to talk to 
 a scholar," and there was a new flush on the poor 
 fellow's cheek, and something watery in his eyes. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my dear sir," cried Barton, 
 greatly ashamed of himself. " Pray go on. The 
 subject is entirely new to me. I had not been 
 aware that there were any serious modern au- 
 thorities in favour of the success of this kind of 
 experiment." 
 
 "Thank you, sir," said Winter, much encour- 
 aged, and taking Barton's hand in his own bat- 
 tered claw ; " thank you. But why should we 
 run only to modern authorities ? All great inven- 
 tions, all great ideas, have been present to men's 
 minds and hopes from the beginning of civilisa- 
 tion. Did not Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin,
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 159 
 
 and hit out, at a stroke, the hypothesis of natural 
 selection ? " 
 
 " Well, he did make a shot at it," admitted 
 Barton, who remembered as much as that from 
 "the old coaching days," and college lectures at 
 St. Gatien's. 
 
 " Well, what do we find ? As soon as we get a 
 whisper of civilisation in Greece, we find Daedalus 
 successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters 
 pretend that the fable does but point to the dis- 
 covery of sails for ships ; but, I put it to you, is 
 that probable ? " 
 
 " Obvious bosh," said Barton. 
 
 " And the meteorological mythologists, sir, they 
 maintain that Daedalus is only the lightning flying 
 in the breast of the storm ! " 
 
 "There's nothing those fellows won't say," 
 replied Barton. 
 
 " I 'm glad you are with me, sir. In Daedalus 
 / see' either a record of a successful attempt at 
 artificial flight, or, at the very least, the expres- 
 sion of an aspiration as old as culture. You 
 wouldn't make Daedalus the evening clouds accom- 
 panying Minos, the sun, to his setting in Sicily, in 
 the West ? " added Winter anxiously. 
 
 " I never heard of such nonsense," said Barton. 
 
 " Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the 
 Royal Academy, is with me, sir, if I may judge 
 by his picture of Daedalus." 
 
 " Every sensible man must be with you," an- 
 swered Barton. 
 
 "Well, sir, I won't detain you with other famous 
 fliers of antiquity, such as Abaris, mounted on an 
 arrow, as described by Herodotus. Doubtless, 
 the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the 
 ignorant Scythians." 
 
 " It must have been, indeed." 
 
 " Then there was the Greek who flew before 
 
 11 *
 
 l6o THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 Nero in the circus ; but he, I admit, had a bad 
 fall, as Suetonius recounts. That character of 
 Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a 
 vulture's in his flight, I take to be a mere figment 
 of the satirist's imagination. But what do you 
 make of Simon Magus ? He, I cannot doubt, had 
 invented a machine in which, like myself, he made 
 use of steam or naphtha. This may be gathered 
 from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He men- 
 tions expressly cuvvum Simonis Magi et quadngas 
 igneas, the chariot of Simon Magus and his vehicles 
 of flame, — clearly the naphtha is alluded to, — which 
 vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. 
 The latter circumstance, as being miraculous, I 
 take leave to doubt ; but certainly Simon Magus 
 had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. 
 But, though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition 
 as fabulous, I am prepared to believe that Simon 
 Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the 
 Aventine! " 
 
 "'The world knows nothing of its greatest 
 men,' " quoted Barton. 
 
 " Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theo- 
 logical acrimony, his character blackened, his flying 
 machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the credu- 
 lous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark 
 ages, naturally, the science of Artificial Flight 
 was either neglected or practised in secret, through 
 fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk 
 at Constantinople who attempted something in 
 this way; but he (th? Turk, I mean) was un- 
 trammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But 
 why should we tarry in the past ? Have we 
 not Mr. Proctor with us, both in Knowledge 
 and the Comhill ? Does not that preeminent 
 authority, Professor Pettigrew Bell, himself de- 
 clare, with the weight, too, of the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, that ' the number of successful flying
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. l6l 
 
 models is considerable. It is not too much to 
 expect,' he goes on, ' that the problem of artificial 
 flight will be actually solved, or at least much 
 simplified.' What less can we expect, as he 
 observes, in the land of Watts and Stephenson, 
 when the construction of flying machines has been 
 1 taken up in earnest by practical men ? ' " 
 
 "We may indeed," said Barton, "hope for the 
 best when persons of your learning and ingenuity 
 devote their efforts to the cause." 
 
 "As to my learning, you flatter me," said Winter. 
 " I am no scholar ; but an enthusiast will study the 
 history of his subject. Did I remark that the great 
 Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits 
 (in a romance, it is true) the possibility of artificial 
 flight ? The artisan of the Happy Valley expected 
 to solve the problem in one year's time. ' If all men 
 were equally virtuous,' said this artist, ' I should 
 with equal alacrity teach them all to fly.' " 
 
 "And you will keep your secret, like Dr. John- 
 son's artist ?" 
 
 " To you I do not mind revealing this much. 
 The vans or wings of my machine describe elliptic 
 figures of eight " 
 
 " I 've seen them do that" said Barton. 
 
 " Like the wings of birds ; and have the same 
 forward and downward stroke, by a direct piston 
 action. The impetus is given, after a descent in 
 air, — which I effected by starting from a height of 
 six feet only, — by a combination of heated naph- 
 tha and of india rubber under torsion. By steam 
 alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying 
 machine soar across two fields. Penaud's machine, 
 relying only on india rubber under torsion, flies for 
 some fifty yards. What a model can do, as Bishop 
 Wilkins well observes, a properly weighted and 
 proportioned flying machine, capable of carrying 
 a man, can do also."
 
 l62 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 a 
 
 But yours, when I first had the pleasure of 
 meeting you, was not carrying you at all." 
 
 " Something had gone wrong with the mecha- 
 nism," answered Winter, sighing. "It is always 
 so. An inventor has many things to contend 
 against. Remember Arkwright, and how he was 
 puzzled hopelessly by that trifling error in the 
 thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. 
 He had to give half his profits to Strutt, the local 
 blacksmith, before Strutt would tell him that he had 
 only to chalk his valves ! The thickness of a coating 
 of chalk made all the difference. Some trifle like 
 that, depend on it, interfered with my machine. 
 You see, I am obliged to make my experiments at 
 night, and in the dark, for fear of being discovered 
 and anticipated. I have been on the verge — nay, 
 over the verge — of success. 'No imaginable in- 
 vention,' Bishop Wilkins says, ' could prove of 
 greater benefit to the world, or greater glory to the 
 author.' A few weeks ago that glory was mine ! " 
 
 " Why a few weeks ago ? " asked Barton. 
 " Was your machine more advanced then than 
 when I met you ? " 
 
 " I cannot explain what had happened to check 
 its motion," said Winter, wearily; "but a few 
 weeks ago my machine acted, and I may say that 
 I knew the sensations of a bird on the wing." 
 
 " Do you mean that you actually flew ? " 
 
 " For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir ! " 
 
 Barton looked at him curiously : two currents 
 of thought — one wild and credulous, the other 
 practical and professional — surged and met in 
 his brain. The professional current proved the 
 stronger for the moment. 
 
 "Good-night," he said. "You are tiring and 
 over-exciting yourself. I will call again soon." 
 
 He did call again, and Winter told him a tale 
 which will be repeated in its proper place.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 163 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 jfounD. 
 
 "All precious things, discovered late, 
 To those that seek them issue forth ; 
 For Love, in sequel, works with Fate, 
 And draws the veil from hidden worth." 
 
 The Sleeping Beauty. 
 
 HAT Margaret and Barton were losing 
 their hearts to each other could not, 
 of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. 
 St. John Deloraine. She noticed that 
 Margaret, though perfectly restored 
 to health, and lacking only the clear brown over 
 the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so light of 
 heart as in the very earliest days of her recovery. 
 Love makes men and women poor company, and, 
 to speak plainly, takes the fun out of them. Mar- 
 garet was absent-minded, given to long intervals of 
 silence, a bad listener, — all of them things hateful 
 to Mrs. St. John Deloraine, but pardoned, in this 
 instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was 
 apt to blush without apparent cause, to start when 
 a knock came to the door, to leave the room hur- 
 riedly, and need to be sought and brought back, 
 when Barton called. Nor was Barton himself such 
 good company as he had been. His manner was 
 uncertain and constrained ; his visits began to be 
 paid at longer intervals; he seemed to have little 
 to say, or talked in fits and starts ; and yet he did 
 not know how to go away. 
 
 Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St. 
 John Deloraine could have interpreted, without 
 difficulty, this awkward position of affairs. 
 
 Now, like most women of her kindly and im- 
 pulsive character (when it has not been refined
 
 164 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. 
 John Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match- 
 maker. She believed in love with her whole 
 heart ; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings 
 of inclination in two young souls, and she simply 
 revelled in an " engagement." All considerations 
 of economy, prudence, and foresight melted away 
 before the ardour of her enthusiasm : to fall in love 
 first, to get engaged next, and to be married as soon 
 as possible afterwards, without regard to conse- 
 quences of any kind, were, in this lady's mind, 
 heroic actions, and almost the whole duty of men 
 and women. 
 
 In her position, and with her opportunities, she 
 soon knew all that was to be known about Mar- 
 garet's affections, and also about Barton's. 
 
 " He 's as much in love with you as a man can 
 be, my dear," she said to Margaret. " Not worthy 
 of him ? Your past a barrier between you and 
 him ? Nonsense, Daisy ; that is his affair. / 
 know you are as good a girl as ever lived. Your 
 father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr. 
 Cranley, — yes, he was a wretch, — had a spite 
 against you. I don't know why, and you won't 
 help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much 
 of a man to let that kind of thing disturb him, 
 I 'm sure. You are afraid of something, Margaret. 
 Your nerves have been unstrung. I 'm sure I 
 don't wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one's 
 nerve. I could no more drive now, as I used to 
 do, or go at the fences I used to think nothing of! 
 But once you are married to a man like Mr. 
 Barton, who is there can frighten you ? And as 
 to being poor," and Mrs. St. John Deloraine 
 explained her generous views as to arrangements 
 on her part, which would leave Margaret far from 
 portionless. 
 
 Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 165 
 
 head on her friend's shoulder, and the friend 
 would shed some natural tears for company; and 
 they would have tea, and Barton would call, and 
 look a great deal at his boots, and fidget with his hat. 
 
 " I 've no patience with you, Mr. Barton," said 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last, when she had so 
 manoeuvred as to have some private conversation 
 with him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. 
 " I 've no patience with you. Why, where is your 
 courage ? ' She has a history ? ' She 's been perse- 
 cuted. Well, where 's your chivalry ? Why don't 
 you try your fortune ? There never was a better 
 girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she 's not — 
 when she 's not disturbed by the nervousness of 
 an undecided young man. If you don't take your 
 courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off 
 on a yachting voyage to the Solomon Islands, or 
 Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I am going to 
 take her for a drive in Battersea Park : it is hand}', 
 and looking very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor 
 in the wilderness. We will get out and saunter 
 among the ponds. I shall be tired, and sit down ; 
 you will show Margaret the marvels of natural 
 history in the other pond, and when you come 
 back you will both have made up your minds ! " 
 
 With this highly transparent ruse Barton ex- 
 pressed his content. The carriage was sent for, 
 and in less than half-an-hour Barton and Mar- 
 garet were standing alone, remote, isolated from 
 the hum of men, looking at a pond where some 
 water-hens were diving, while a fish (" coarse," 
 but not uninteresting) occasionally flopped on 
 the surface. The trees — it was the last week 
 of May — were in the earliest freshness of their 
 foliage ; the air, for a wonder, was warm and still. 
 
 "How quiet and pretty it is ! " said Margaret. 
 " Who would think we were in London ? " 
 
 Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot
 
 166 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, he thought the 
 more. 
 
 " Miss Burnside!" he exclaimed suddenly, "we 
 have known each other now for some time." 
 
 This was a self-evident proposition ; but Mar- 
 garet felt what was coming, and trembled. She 
 turned for a moment, pretending to watch the 
 movements of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she 
 was nerving herself to face the hard part of her duty, 
 and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life. 
 
 " Yes," she said at last ; " we have known each 
 other for some time, and yet — you know nothing 
 about me." 
 
 With these words she lifted her eyes and looked 
 him straight in the face. There seemed a certain 
 pride and nobility in her he had not seen before, 
 though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, 
 and there was a mark of pain on her brow. What 
 was she going to tell him ? 
 
 Barton felt his courage come back to him. 
 
 " I know one thing about you, and that is enough 
 for me. I know I love you ! " he said. " Margaret, 
 can't you care for me a little ? Don't tell me 
 anything you think you should not say. I'm not 
 curious." 
 
 Margaret turned back again to her inspection of 
 the pond and its inmates, grasping the iron railing 
 in front of her and gazing down into the waters, 
 so that he could not see her face. 
 
 " No," she said at last, in a very low voice ; " it 
 would not be fair." Then, after another pause, 
 
 " There is some one " she murmured, and 
 
 stopped. 
 
 This was the last thing Barton had expected. 
 If she did not care for him, he fancied she cared 
 for nobody. 
 
 " If you like some one better " he was 
 
 beginning.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 167 
 
 " But I don't like him at all," interrupted Mar- 
 garet. " He was very kind, but " 
 
 "Then can't you tike me?" asked Barton; and 
 by this time he was very near her, and was 
 looking down into her face, as curiously as she 
 was still studying the natural history of Battersea 
 Ponds. 
 
 "Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to 
 know," murmured Margaret. And yet her rosy 
 confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and 
 ashamed, proved that she knew very well. Love 
 is not always so blind but that Barton saw his 
 opportunity, and was assured that she had 
 surrendered. And he prepared, a conqueror, to 
 march in with all the honours and rewards of war ; 
 for the place was lonely, and a covenant is no 
 covenant until it is sealed. 
 
 But when he would have kissed her, Margaret 
 disengaged herself gently, with a little sigh, and 
 returned to the strong defensible position by the 
 iron railings. 
 
 " I must tell you about myself," she said. " I 
 had promised never to tell, but I must. I have 
 been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many 
 things have happened." And she sighed. 
 
 However impassioned a lover may be, he does 
 naturally prefer that there should be no mystery 
 about her he adores. Barton had convinced him- 
 self (aided by the eloquence and reposing on the 
 feminine judgment of Mrs. St. John Deloraine) 
 that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong 
 to conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes 
 and kind face and suspect her ; though, to anyone 
 but a lover, these natural advantages are no argu- 
 ment. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an 
 extreme curiosity, and, by way of comforting and 
 aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming an 
 affectionate attitude. But she moved a little
 
 l68 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 away, and, still turning towards the friendly 
 ponds, began her story : 
 
 "The person — the gentleman whom I was 
 thinking of was a friend of my father's, who, at 
 one time, wanted him" — here Margaret paused — 
 " wanted me to — to be his wife some day." 
 
 The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up 
 the figure of a well-to-do local pawnbroker, or 
 captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse 
 of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his 
 fancy. 
 
 " I didn't like him much, though he certainly 
 was very kind. His name, — but perhaps I should 
 not mention his name ? " 
 
 "Never mind," said Barton. "I daresay I 
 never heard of him." 
 
 " But I should tell you, first of all, that my own 
 name is not that which you, and Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to 
 tell her ; but I have become so frightened lately, 
 and it seemed so mean to be living with her under 
 a false name. But to speak of it brought so many 
 terrible things back to mind." 
 
 " Dear Margaret," Barton whispered, taking 
 her hand. 
 
 They Avere both standing, at this moment, with 
 their backs to the pathway, and an observer 
 might have thought that they were greatly in- 
 terested in the water-fowl. 
 
 " My name is not Burnside," Margaret went 
 on, glancing over her shoulder across the gardens 
 and towards the river ; " my name is " 
 
 " Daisy Shields ! " cried a clear voice. " Daisy, 
 you 're found at last, and I 've found you ! How 
 glad Miss Marlett will be ! " 
 
 But, by this time the astonished Barton beheld 
 Margaret in the impassioned embrace of a very 
 pretty and highly- excited young lady ; while Mrs.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 169 
 
 St. John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with 
 amazement in her eye. 
 
 "Oh, my dear!" Miss Harman (for it was that 
 enthusiast) hurried on, in a pleasant flow of talk, 
 like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. " Oh, 
 my dear ! I was walking in the park with ni}' 
 maid, and I met Mrs. St. John Deloraine, and 
 she said she had lost her friends, and I came to 
 help her to look for them ; and I 've found you ! 
 It "s like Stanley finding Livingstone. How I 
 Found Daisy. I '11 write a book about it. And 
 where have you been hiding yourself? None of 
 the girls ever knew anything was the matter, — 
 only Miss Marlett and me ! And I 've left for 
 good ; and she and I are quite friends, and I 'm to 
 be presented next Drawing Room." 
 
 While this address (which, at least, proved that 
 Margaret had acquaintances in the highest circles) 
 was being poured forth, Mrs. St. John Deloraine 
 and Barton were observing all with unfeigned 
 astonishment and concern. 
 
 They both perceived that the mystery of Mar- 
 garet's past was about to be dispelled, or rather, 
 for Barton, it already was dispelled. The names 
 of Shields and Miss Marlett had told him all that 
 he needed to know. But he would rather have 
 heard the whole story from his lady's lips ; and 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing 
 Janey Harman of having interrupted a "proposal," 
 and spoiled a darling scheme. 
 
 It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar 
 sharpness that Mrs. St. John Deloraine, observing 
 that the day was clouded over, requested Mar- 
 garet to return to the carriage. 
 
 " And as Miss Harman seems to have a great 
 deal to say to you, Margaret," added the philan- 
 thropic lady, "you two had better walk on as fast 
 as you can ; for you must be very careful not to
 
 170 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 catch cold ! I see Miss Harman's maid waiting 
 for her in the distance there. And you and I, 
 Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will 
 follow slower; I'm not a good walker." 
 
 " Now," said Barton's companion eagerly, when 
 Margaret and Janey, about three yards in advance, 
 might be conventionally regarded as beyond ear- 
 shot, — "Now, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate 
 you ? " 
 
 Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh uneasily. 
 
 " I don't know, — I hope so, — I 'm not sure." 
 
 "Oh, you're not satisfactory, — not at all satis- 
 factory ! Are you still shilly-shallying ? What is 
 the matter with young people ? " cried the veteran 
 of twenty-nine. " Or was it that wretched Janey, 
 rushing in, like a cow in a conservatory ? She 's 
 a regular school-girl ! " 
 
 " It isn't that exactly, or at least that 's not all. 
 I hope — I think she does care for me, or will care 
 for me, a little." 
 
 "Oh, bother!" said Mrs. St. John Deloraine. 
 She would not, for all the world, reveal the secrets 
 of the Confessional, and tell Barton what she 
 knew of the state of Margaret's heart. But she was 
 highly provoked, and showed it in her manners, at 
 no time applauded for their repose. 
 
 " The fact is," Barton admitted, " that I 'm so 
 taken by surprise I hardly know where I am ! I 
 do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited, 
 that I have every reason to be happy. But, just 
 as she was beginning to tell me about herself, that 
 young lady, who seems to have known her 
 at school, rushed in, and explained the whole 
 mystery." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, turning 
 a little pale, and looking anxiously at Barton, 
 "was it anything so very dreadful?" 
 
 " She called her Daisy Shields," said Barton.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 171 
 
 " Well, suppose she did ! I always fancied, after 
 what happened at The Bunhouse, that that dreadful 
 Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false name. It 
 was not her fault. The question is, What was her 
 reason for keeping her real name concealed ? " 
 
 "That's what I'm coming to," said Barton. 
 " I have a friend, a Mr. Maitland." 
 
 "Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien's ? " asked the 
 widow. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "I know him." 
 
 "Yes, I have often heard him speak of you," 
 said Barton. " Well, he had a protegee — a kind of 
 ward, to tell a long story in few words, — a girl whom 
 he had educated, and whom he was under some kind 
 of promise to her father to marry. The father died 
 suddenly ; the girl disappeared mysteriously from 
 school at the same moment ; and Maitland, after 
 many efforts, has never been able to find out any- 
 thing about her. Now, this girl's name, this girl 
 in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret 
 Shields. That is the very name by which your 
 friend, Miss Harman, called Margaret. So, you 
 see, even if I am right, and if she does care for me, 
 what a dreadful position I am in ! I want to 
 marry the girl to whom my friend is, more or less, 
 engaged ! My friend, after doing his best to find 
 his ward, and after really suffering a great deal 
 of anxiety and annoyance, is living abroad. What 
 am I to say to him ? " 
 
 " Mr. Barton," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, 
 "perhaps you alarm yourself too much. I think" 
 — here she dropped her voice a little — " I think — 
 I don't think Mr. Maitland's heart is very deeply 
 concerned about Miss Shields. I may be wrong, 
 but I know him pretty well," — she gave a little 
 nervous laugh, — "and I don't think he's in love 
 with Margaret."
 
 172 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 By the time she reached the end of this inter- 
 rupted and tentative discourse Mrs. St. John 
 Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June. 
 
 Barton felt an enormous weight lilted from his 
 heart, and a flood of welcome light poured into 
 his mind. The two philanthropists were in love 
 with each other ! 
 
 " He 's an awfully good fellow, Maitland," he 
 replied. " But you are right ; I 'm sure you are 
 right. You must know. He is not in love with 
 Margaret." 
 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased 
 at the tribute to Maitland's unobtrusive virtues, 
 and replied : 
 
 " But he will be very glad to hear that she is 
 found at last, and quite safe ; and I '11 write to 
 him myself, this very evening. I heard from him, — 
 about a charity, you know, — a few days ago, and 
 I have his address." 
 
 By this time they had reached the carriage. 
 Janey, with many embraces, tore herself from 
 Margaret, and went off with her attendant ; while 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with a beaming face, 
 gave the coachman the order " Home." 
 
 " We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon," 
 she cried to Barton; and no offer of hospitality 
 had ever been more welcome. 
 
 He began to walk home, turning over his dis- 
 coveries in his thoughts, when he suddenly came 
 to a dead halt. 
 
 " By George ! " he said out loud ; " I '11 go back 
 and have it out with her at once. I 've had enough 
 of this shilly-shally." 
 
 He turned and strode off in the direction of 
 Cheyne Walk. In a few minutes he was standing 
 at the familiar door. 
 
 " Will you ask Miss — Miss Burnside if she can 
 see me for one moment ?" he said to the servant,
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 173 
 
 " I have forgotten something she wished me to do 
 for her," he added in a mumble. 
 
 Then he was taken- into the boudoir, and pres- 
 ently Margaret appeared, still in her bonnet and furs. 
 
 " I couldn't help coming back, Margaret," he 
 said, as soon as she entered the room. " I want 
 to tell you that it is all right, that you needn't 
 think — I mean, that I know all about it, and that 
 there is nothing, nothing to prevent us, — I mean, 
 
 Margaret, if you really care for me " Then he 
 
 came to a dead stop. 
 
 It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not 
 exactly say to Margaret, " My dear girl, you need not 
 worry yourself about Maitland. He does not care 
 a pin for you: he'll be delighted at being released. 
 He is in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine." 
 
 That would have been a statement both ade- 
 quate and explicit ; but it could not have been 
 absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would 
 have been exceedingly unfair to her hostess. 
 
 The girl came forward to the table, and stood 
 with her hand on it, looking at Barton. She did 
 not help him out in any way; her attitude was safe, 
 but embarrassing. 
 
 He made a charge, as it were, at the position — 
 a random, desperate charge. 
 
 " Margaret, can you trust me ? " he asked. 
 
 She merely put out her hand, which he seized. 
 
 " Well then, believe me when I tell you that 
 I know everything about your doubts; that I know 
 more than anyone else can do ; and that there is 
 nothing to prevent us from — being happy. More 
 than that, if you will only agree to make me happy, 
 you will make every one else happy too. Can't you 
 take it on trust ? Can't you believe me ? " 
 
 Margaret said nothing ; but she hid her face on 
 Barton's shoulder. She did believe him. 
 
 The position was carried ! 
 
 12
 
 174 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 XLhe /Ifcarfc ot Cain. 
 
 EXT morning Barton entered his 
 sitting-room in very high spirits, and 
 took up his letters. He had written 
 to Maitland the night before, saying 
 little but, " Come home at once. Mar- 
 garet is found. She is going to be my wife. You 
 can't come too quickly, if you wish to hear of 
 something very much to your advantage." A load 
 was off his mind, and he felt as Romeo did just 
 before the bad news about Juliet reached him. 
 
 In this buoyant disposition, Barton opened his 
 letters. The first was in a hand he knew very 
 well, — that of a man who had been his fellow- 
 student in Paris and Vienna, and who was now a 
 prosperous young physician. The epistle ran 
 thus : 
 
 " Dear Barton, — I 'm off to the West of Ireland, for a 
 fortnight. People are pretty fit, as the season has not 
 run far. Most of my patients have not yet systematically 
 over-eaten themselves. I want you to do something for 
 me. Martin and Wright, the lawyers, have a queer 
 little bit of medical jurisprudence, about which young 
 Wright, who was at Oriel in our time, asked my opinion. 
 I recommended him to see you, as it is more in your 
 line ; and my line will presently be attached to that 
 eminent general practitioner, 'The Blue Doctor.' May 
 he prosper with the Galway salmon ! 
 
 " Thine, 
 
 "Alfred Franks." 
 
 "Lucky beggar!" thought Barton to himself;
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 175 
 
 but he was too happy to envy even a man who 
 had a fortnight of salmon-fishing before him. 
 
 The next letter he opened was in a blue en- 
 velope, with the stamp of Messrs. Martin and 
 Wright. The brief and formal note which it con- 
 tained requested Dr. Barton to call, that very day 
 if possible, at the chambers of the respectable 
 firm, " on business of great importance." 
 
 "What in the world can they want ?" thought 
 Barton. " Nobody can have left me any money. 
 Besides, Franks says it is a point in medical 
 jurisprudence. That sounds attractive. I '11 go 
 down after breakfast." 
 
 He walked along the sunny Embankment, and 
 that bright prospect of houses, trees, and ships 
 had never seemed so beautiful. In an hour he 
 was in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and had shaken 
 hands with young Wright, whom he knew; had 
 been introduced to old Wright, a somewhat stately 
 man of business, and had taken his seat in the 
 chair sacred to clients. 
 
 "Dr. Barton," said old Mr. Wright, solemnly, 
 " you are, I think, the author of this book ? " 
 
 He handed to Barton a copy of his own volume, 
 in its grey paper cover, Les Tatouages, Etude Medico- 
 Legale. 
 
 " Certainly," said Barton. " I wrote it when I 
 was in Paris. I had plenty of chances of studying 
 •tattooing in the military hospitals." 
 
 " I have not read it myself," said old Mr. Wright, 
 " because I am not acquainted with the French 
 language ; but my son tells me it is a work of great 
 learning." 
 
 Barton could only bow, and mutter that he was 
 glad Mr. Wright liked it. Why he should like it, 
 or what the old gentleman wanted, he could not 
 even imagine. 
 
 " We are at present engaged in a very curious 
 
 12 *
 
 I76 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 case, Dr. Barton," went on the lawyer, " in which 
 we think your special studies may assist us. The 
 position is this : Nearly eight months ago, a client 
 of ours died — a Mr. Richard Johnson, of Link- 
 heaton, in the North. You must excuse me if I 
 seem to be troubling you with a long story?" 
 
 Barton mentioned that he " was delighted," and 
 added, " Not at all," in the vague modern dialect. 
 
 " This Mr. Richard Johnson, then, was a some- 
 what singular character. He was what is called 
 a ' statesman ' in the North. He had a small 
 property of about four hundred acres, on the 
 marches, as they say, or borders of the Earl of 
 Birkenhead's lands. Here he lived almost alone, 
 and in a very quiet way. There was not even a 
 village near him, and there were few persons of 
 his own position in life, because his little place 
 was almost embedded, if I may say so, in Lord 
 Birkenhead's country, which is pastoral. You are 
 with me, so far?" 
 
 " Perfectly," said Barton. 
 
 " This Mr. Johnson, then, lived quite alone, 
 with an old housekeeper, dead since his decease, 
 and with one son, called Richard, like himself. 
 The young man was of an adventurous character, 
 a ne'er-do-weel in fact ; and about twenty years 
 ago he left Linkheaton, after a violent quarrel 
 with his father. It was understood that he had 
 run away to sea. Two years later he returned ; 
 there was another quarrel, and the old man turned 
 him out, vowing that he would never forgive him. 
 But, not long after that, a very rich deposit of 
 coal — a very rich deposit," said Mr. Wright, with 
 the air of a man tasting most excellent claret — 
 " was discovered on this very estate of Link- 
 heaton. Old Johnson, without much exertion on 
 his part, and simply through the payment of royal- 
 ties by the company that worked the coal, became
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 177 
 
 exceedingly opulent, in what you call most affluent 
 circumstances." 
 
 Here Mr. Wright paused, as if to see whether 
 Barton was beginning to understand the point of 
 the narrative, which, it is needless to remark, he 
 was not. There is no marked connection between 
 coal mines, however lucrative, and Les Tatouages, 
 Etude Medico -Legale. 
 
 " In spite of his wealth, Mr. Johnson in no way 
 changed his habits. He invested his money care- 
 fully, under our advice, and he became, as I said, 
 an extremely warm man. But he continued to 
 live in the old farmhouse, and did not, in any 
 way, court society. To tell the truth, except 
 Lord Birkenhead, who is our client, I never knew 
 anyone who was at all intimate with the old man. 
 Lord Birkenhead had a respect for him, as a 
 neighbour and a person of the old-fashioned type. 
 Yes," Mr. Wright added, seeing that his son was 
 going to speak, " and, as you were about to say, 
 Tom, they were brought together by a common 
 misfortune. Like old Mr. Johnson, his lordship 
 has a son who is very, very — unsatisfactory. His 
 lordship has not seen the Honourable Mr. Thomas 
 Cranley for many years ; and in that lonely country 
 the two boys had been companions in wild amuse- 
 ments, long before. He is very unsatisfactory, the 
 Honourable Thomas Cranley;" and Mr. Wright 
 sighed heavily, in sympathy with a client so noble 
 and so afflicted. 
 
 " I know the beast," said Barton, without re- 
 flecting. 
 
 Mr. Wright looked at him in amazement and 
 horror. "The beast!" A son of Lord Birken- 
 head's called "The beast!" 
 
 " To return to our case, Dr. Barton," he went 
 on severely, with some stress laid on the doctor. 
 " Mr. Johnson died, leaving, by a will made on
 
 178 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 his death-bed, all that he possessed to his son 
 Richard, or, in case of his decease, to the heirs of 
 his body lawfully begotten. From that day to 
 this we have hunted everywhere for the man. 
 We have traced him all over the world : we have 
 heard of him in Australia, Burmah, Guiana, 
 Smyrna, but at Smyrna we lose sight of him. 
 This advertisement," said the old gentleman, 
 taking up the outside sheet of the Times, and 
 folding it so as to bring the second column into 
 view, " remained for more than seven months 
 unanswered, or only answered by impostors and 
 idiots." 
 
 He tapped his finger on the place as he handed 
 the paper to Barton, who read aloud : 
 
 " Linkheaton. — If Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, 
 Durham, last heard of at Smyrna in 1875, will apply to 
 Messrs. Martin and Wright, Lincoln's Inn Fields, he 
 will hear of something very greatly to his advantage. 
 His father died, forgiving him. A reward of £1,000 
 will be paid to anyone producing Richard Johnson, or 
 proving his decease." 
 
 " As a mixture of business with the home 
 affections," said old Mr. Wright proudly (for the 
 advertisement was of his own composition), " I 
 think that leaves little to be desired?" 
 
 " It is admirable," said Barton, — " admirable ; 
 but may I ask " 
 
 " Where the tattooing comes in ? " said Mr. 
 Wright. " I am just approaching that. The only 
 person from whom we received any reliable in- 
 formation about Richard Johnson was an old ship- 
 mate of his, a wandering adventurous character, 
 now, I believe, in Paraguay, where we cannot 
 readily communicate with him. According to his 
 account, Johnson was an ordinary seafaring man, 
 tanned, and wearing a black beard, but easily to
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I79 
 
 be recognised for an excellent reason. He was 
 tattooed almost all over the whole body." 
 
 Barton nearly leaped out of his chair, the client's 
 chair, so sudden a light flashed on him. 
 
 "What is the matter, Dr. Barton? I thought I 
 should interest you; but you seem quite excited." 
 
 " I really beg your pardon," said Barton. " It 
 was automatic, I think; besides, I am extremely 
 interested in tattooing." 
 
 " Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen 
 Johnson. He appears, from what our informant 
 tells us, to have been a most remarkable specimen. 
 He had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by 
 Burmese, by Arabs, and, in a peculiar blue tint 
 and to a particular pattern, by the Dyacks of 
 Borneo. We have here a rough chart, drawn 
 by our informant, of his principal decorations." 
 
 Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet 
 of drawing-paper, on which was rudely outlined 
 the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the breast, 
 thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs. 
 
 The guess which made Barton leap up had not 
 been mistaken : he recognised the tattooings he 
 had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields. 
 
 This confirmation of what he had conjectured, 
 however, did not draw any exclamation or mark 
 of excitement from Barton, who was now on his 
 guard. 
 
 " This is highly interesting," he said, as he 
 examined the diagram ; " and I am sure, Mr. 
 Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognise 
 a claimant with such remarkable peculiarities." 
 
 " No, sir ; it is easy enough, and we have been 
 able to dismiss scores of sham Richard Johnsons. 
 But one man presented himself the day before 
 yesterday — a rough sailor fellow, who went straight 
 to the point; asked if the man we wanted had any 
 private marks ; said he knew what they were, and
 
 l80 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we 
 could verify the design, corresponded to that 
 drawing." 
 
 " Well," asked Barton, controlling his excite- 
 ment by a great effort, "what did you do with 
 him ? " 
 
 " We said to him that it would be necessary to 
 take the advice of an expert before we could 
 make any movement ; and, though he told us 
 things about old Johnson and Linkheaton, which 
 it seemed almost impossible that anyone but the 
 right man could have known, we put him off till 
 we had seen you, and could make an appoint- 
 ment for you to examine the tattooings. They 
 must be dealt with first, before any other identifi- 
 cation." 
 
 " I suppose you have made some other necessary 
 inquiries? Did he say why he was so late in 
 answering the advertisement ? It has been out 
 for several months." 
 
 " Yes, and that is rather in his favour," said 
 Mr. Wright. " If he had been an impostor on the 
 look-out, he would probably have come to us long 
 ago. But he has just returned from the Cape, 
 where he had been out of the way of newspapers, 
 and he did not see the advertisement till he came 
 across it three or four days ago." 
 
 " Very well," said Barton. " Make an appoint- 
 ment with the man for any time to-morrow, and I 
 will be with you." 
 
 As he said this he looked very hard and signi- 
 ficantly at the younger Mr. Wright. 
 
 " Very good, sir ; thank you. Shall we say at 
 noon to-morrow ? " 
 
 " With pleasure," answered Barton, still with 
 his eye on the younger partner. 
 
 He then said good-bye, and was joined, as he 
 had hoped, in the outer office by young Wright.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. l8l 
 
 " You had something to say to me ? " asked the 
 junior member of the firm. 
 
 " Several things," said Barton, smiling. " And 
 first, would you mind finding out whether the coast 
 is clear — whether any one is watching for me ? " 
 
 " Watching for you ! What do you mean ? " 
 
 "Just take a look round the square, and tell me 
 whether any suspicious character is about." 
 
 Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, 
 and stood lighting a cigarette on the outer steps. 
 
 " Not a soul in sight but lawyer's clerks," he 
 reported. 
 
 " Very well ; just tell your father that, as it is a 
 fine morning, you are taking a turn with me." 
 
 Barton's friend did as he wished, and presently 
 the pair had some serious conversation. 
 
 " I '11 do exactly as you suggest, and explain to 
 my father," said the young lawyer as they separated. 
 
 " Thanks ; it is so much easier for you to explain 
 than for a stranger like myself," said Barton, and 
 strolled westward by way of Covent Garden. 
 
 At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, 
 theatrical costumiers, Barton stopped, went in, was 
 engaged some time with the Messrs. Aminadab, 
 and finally had a cab called for him, and drove 
 home with a pretty bulky parcel. 
 
 * * * * •-:-. * 
 
 At five minutes to twelve on the following day, 
 a tall, burly, mahogany-coloured mariner, attired, 
 for the occasion, in a frock-coat and hat, appeared 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He seemed to be but 
 ill acquainted with those coasts, and mooned about 
 for some minutes before he reached the door of 
 Messrs. Wright. Then he rang, the door was 
 opened, and he was admitted into the presence of 
 the partners. 
 
 " I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your
 
 l82 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 letter," he said with a Northern burr, bowing 
 awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute 
 by touching his forelock. 
 
 His eyes wandered round the room, where he 
 saw no one but the partners, with whom he was 
 already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentle- 
 man, — a gentleman with hay-coloured hair, a soft 
 hat, spectacles, and a tow-coloured beard. He 
 had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty com- 
 plexion, and the air of one who smoked too much. 
 
 " Good - morning, Mr. — h'm — Mr. Johnson," 
 said old Mr. Wright. " As we told you, sir, we 
 have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry, 
 requested Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect 
 — h'm — the personal marks of which you spoke. 
 Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great authority 
 on these matters, — author of Die Tattuirung, a very 
 learned work, I am told." 
 
 Thus introduced, the Professor bowed. 
 
 "Glad to meet you, sir," said the sailor-man 
 gruffly, "or any gentleman as really knows what's 
 what." 
 
 "You have been a great traveller, sir?" said 
 the learned Professor, whose Teutonic accent it is 
 superfluous to reproduce. " You have in many 
 lands travelled ? So ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; I 've seen the world." 
 
 " And you are much tattooed : it is to me very 
 interesting. You have by many races been 
 decorated ? " 
 
 " Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir ! " 
 
 "How happy you are to have had such expe- 
 riences ! Now, the Burmese — ah ! have you any 
 little Burmese marks ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder," 
 replied the seafaring man. " Saving your pre- 
 sence, I '11 strip to the buff." 
 
 "The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you,
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 183 
 
 sir," this was in reply to young Mr. Wright. 
 "The naked body! why, buff! 'Buff,' the ab- 
 stract word, the actual stuff, the very wesen of 
 man unclothed. ' Buffer,' the concrete man, in 
 the ' buff,' in the flesh ; it is sehr interessant" 
 
 While the learned Professor muttered these 
 metaphysical and philological reflections, the sea- 
 man was stripping himself to the waist. 
 
 "That's the Burmese style, sir," he said, 
 pointing to his shoulders and upper arm. 
 
 These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft 
 blue; the pattern was a series of diminishing 
 squares, from which long narrow triangles ran 
 down to the elbow-joints. 
 
 " Sehr schon, sehr schon," exclaimed the delighted 
 Professor. "It is very hiibsch, very pretty, very 
 well. We cannot now decorate, we Germans. 
 Ach, it is mournful !" and he sighed. "And now, 
 sir, have you to show me any moko ? A little moko 
 would be very instructive." 
 
 " Moko ? Rather ! The Maori pattern, you 
 mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just look be- 
 tween my shoulders," and the seaman turned a 
 broad bare back, whereon were designs of curious 
 involuted spirals. 
 
 "That is right, that is right," whispered the 
 Professor. " Moko, schlange, serpent - marks, so 
 they call it in their tongue. Better moko, on an 
 European man, have I never seen. You observe," 
 he remarked to the elder Mr. Wright, waving his 
 hand as he followed the tattooed lines, — "you 
 observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful." 
 " Extremely interesting," said Mr. Wright, who, 
 being .no anthropologist, seemed nervous and 
 uncomfortable. 
 
 " Corresponds, too, with the marks in the pic- 
 ture," he added, comparing the sketch of the 
 original Shields with the body of the Claimant.
 
 184 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 "Are you satisfied now, governor?" asked the 
 sailor. 
 
 " One little moment. Have you on the Red 
 Sea coast been ? Have you been at Suakim ? 
 Have you any Arab markings ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes; here you are!" and the voyager 
 pointed to his breast. 
 
 The Professor inspected, with unconcealed de- 
 light, some small tattooings of irregular form. 
 
 " It is, it is," he cried, " the wasm, the shavat^ 
 the Semitic tribal mark, the mark with which the 
 Arab tribes brand their cattle ! Of old time they 
 did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr 
 Professor Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do 
 you know what he calls that very mark, my dear 
 sir?" 
 
 " Not I," said the sailor; " I 'm no scholar." 
 
 " He says it was, — I do not say he is right," 
 cried the Professor in a loud voice, pointing a 
 finger at his victim's breast — " he says it was 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN ! " 
 
 The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a 
 livid white, and grasped at a bookcase by which 
 he stood. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he cried, through his 
 chattering teeth; "what do you mean with your 
 damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain ? 
 The mark 's all right ! A Hadendowa woman did 
 it in Suakim years ago. Ain't it on that chart of 
 yours ? " 
 
 " Certainly, good sir ; it is," answered the Pro- 
 fessor. "Why do you so agitate yourself? The 
 
 * Shared or Shart. — " The shart was in old times a tattooed 
 mark. ... In the patriarchal story of Cain . . . the 
 institution of blood revenge is connected with a ' mark ' 
 which Jehovah appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else 
 than the shart, or tribal mark, which every man bore on 
 his person ?" — Robertson Smith, Kinship in Ancient Arabia, 
 p. 215.
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 185 
 
 proof is complete!" he added, still pointing at the 
 sailor's breast. 
 
 " Then I '11 put on my togs, with your leave : 
 it 's none so warm ! " grumbled the man. 
 
 He had so far completed his dressing that he 
 was in his waistcoat, and was just looking round 
 for his coat. 
 
 " Stop ! " said the Professor. " Hold Mr. 
 Johnson's coat for a moment ! " 
 
 This was to young Wright, who laid his hands 
 on the garment in question. 
 
 " You must be tired, sir," said the Professor, in 
 a very soft voice. " May I offer you a leedle 
 cigarette? " 
 
 He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette case, 
 and, in a thoroughly English accent, he went on : 
 
 " I have waited long to give you back your 
 cigarette case, which you left at your club, Mr. 
 Thomas Cranley!" 
 
 The sailor's eye fell on it. He dashed the silver 
 box violently to the ground, and trampled on it, 
 then he made one rush at his coat. 
 
 " Hold it, hold it ! " cried Barton, laying aside 
 his Teutonic accent, — " hold it : there 's a revolver 
 in the pocket ! " 
 
 But there was no need to struggle for the coat. 
 
 The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, 
 a crumpled but not unconscious mass, on the 
 floor. 
 
 "Call in the police !" said Barton. "They'll 
 have no difficulty in taking him." 
 
 " This is the man against whom you have the 
 warrant," he went on, as young Wright opened 
 the door, and admitted two policemen. " I charge 
 the Honourable Thomas Cranley with murder ! " 
 
 The officers lifted the fallen man. 
 
 " Let him be," said Barton. " He has collapsed. 
 Lay him on the floor : he 's better so. He needs
 
 i86 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 a turn of my profession : his heart 's weak. Bring 
 some brandy." 
 
 Young Wright went for the spirits, while the 
 frightened old lawyer kept murmuring — 
 
 " The Hon. Thomas Cranley was always very 
 unsatisfactory ! " 
 
 It had been explained to the old gentleman that 
 an impostor would be unmasked, and a criminal 
 arrested ; but he had not been informed that the 
 culprit was the son of his great client, Lord 
 Birkenhead. 
 
 Barton picked up the cigarette case, and as he, 
 for the first time, examined its interior, some 
 broken glass fell out and tinkled on the floor. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 XLbc Uerofct of ffate. 
 
 AITLAND did not dally long in the 
 Levant after getting Barton's letter. 
 He was soon in a position to receive, 
 in turn, the congratulations which he 
 offered to Margaret and Barton with 
 unaffected delight. 
 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood 
 each other ! 
 
 Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, 
 was happy in a thoroughly human old-fashioned 
 way. 
 
 Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley's trial 
 dragged on. Interest, as usual, was frittered away 
 in examinations before the magistrates. 
 
 But, at last, the day of judgment shone into a
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 187 
 
 Court crowded as Courts are when it is the agony 
 of a gentleman that the public has to view. 
 
 When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest 
 falsehood, proclaimed himself " Not Guilty," his 
 voice was clear and strong enough, though the 
 pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of 
 his situation, but the ill-health which, during his 
 confinement, had often made it doubtful whether 
 he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly 
 judgment. 
 
 The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, 
 stated the theory of the Prosecution, the case 
 against Cranley. His argument is here offered in 
 a condensed form : 
 
 First, Counsel explained the position of John- 
 son, or Shields, as the unconscious heir of great 
 wealth ; and set forth his early and late relations 
 with the prisoner, a dishonoured and unscrupu- 
 lous outcast of Society. The prisoner had been 
 intimately acquainted with the circumstances of 
 Johnson's early life, with his history and his 
 home. His plan therefore was to kill him, and 
 then personate him. A celebrated case, which 
 would be present to the minds of the Jury, proved 
 that a most plausible attempt at the personation 
 of a long-missing man might be made by an un- 
 educated impostor, who possessed none of the 
 minute local and personal knowledge of the 
 prisoner. Now, to personate Johnson, a sailor 
 whose body was known to have been indelibly 
 marked by the tattooing of various barbarous 
 races, it was necessary that the prisoner should 
 be similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, 
 with unusual heartlessness, he had persuaded his 
 victim to reproduce on his body the distinctive 
 marks of Johnson, and then had destroyed him 
 with fiendish ingenuity, in the very act of 
 assuming his personality. The very instrument
 
 l88 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 it might be said, which stamped Cranley as John- 
 son, slew Johnson himself, and the process which 
 hall-marked the prisoner as the heir of vast wealth, 
 stigmatised him with the brand of Cain. The 
 personal marks which seemed to establish the 
 Claimant's case, demonstrated his guilt. He was 
 detected by the medical expert brought in to 
 prove his identity, and was recognised by that 
 gentleman, Dr. Barton, who would be called, and 
 who had once already exposed him in a grave 
 social offence — cheating at cards. The same 
 witness had made a post-mortem examination of the 
 body of Richard Johnson, and had then suspected 
 the method by which he had been murdered. 
 
 The murder itself, according to the theory of 
 the prosecution, was committed in the following 
 manner : Cranley, disguised as a sailor (the dis- 
 guise in which he was finally taken), had been in 
 the habit of meeting Johnson, and being tattooed 
 by him, in a private room of the Hit or Miss 
 tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 
 7th, he met him there for the last time. He left 
 the tavern late, at nearly twelve o'clock, telling the 
 landlady that " his friend," as he called Johnson, 
 had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the estab- 
 lishment, the landlady, Mrs. Gullick, found the 
 room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening 
 on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson 
 — or Shields, as she called him — had wakened, and 
 left the house by the back staircase, which led to 
 a side alley. This way Johnson, who knew the 
 house well, often took, on leaving. On the follow- 
 ing afternoon, however, the dead body of Johnson, 
 with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found 
 in a cart belonging to the Vestry — a cart which, 
 during the night, had remained near a shed on the 
 piece of waste ground adjoining the Hit or Miss. 
 A coroner's jury had taken the view that John-
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. l8g 
 
 son, being intoxicated, had strayed into the piece 
 of waste ground (it would be proved that the door 
 in the palisade surrounding it was open on that 
 night), had lain down in the cart, and died in his 
 sleep of cold and exposure. But evidence derived 
 from a later medical examination would establish 
 the presumption, which would be confirmed by 
 the testimony of an eye-witness, that death had 
 been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a 
 poison which it would be shown he had in his 
 possession, — a poison which was not swallowed by 
 the victim, but introduced by means of a puncture 
 into the system. The dead man's body had then 
 been removed to a place where his decease would be 
 accounted for as the result of cold and exhaustion. 
 A witness would be put in the box who, by an 
 extraordinary circumstance, had been enabled to 
 see the crime committed by the prisoner, and the 
 body carried away, though, at the moment, he did 
 not understand the meaning of what he saw. As 
 the circumstances by which this witness had been 
 enabled to behold what was done at dead of night, 
 in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not com- 
 manded from any neighbouring house nor emi- 
 nence, were exceedingly peculiar, testimony would 
 be brought to show that the witness really had 
 enjoyed the opportunity of observation which he 
 claimed. 
 
 On the whole, then, as the prisoner had un- 
 deniably personated Johnson, and claimed John- 
 son's property ; as he undeniably had induced 
 Johnson, unconsciously, to aid him in the task of 
 personation ; as the motive for the murder was 
 plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the 
 medical evidence, had probably been murdered ; 
 and as an eye-witness professed to have seen, 
 without comprehending, the operation by which 
 death, according to the medical theory, was caused, 
 
 13
 
 10,0 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 the counsel for the prosecution believed that the 
 jury could find no other verdict than that the 
 prisoner had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson 
 on the night of February 7th. 
 
 This opened the case for the Crown. It is unne- 
 cessary to recapitulate the evidence of all the 
 witnesses who proved, step by step, the state- 
 ments of the prosecution. First was demon- 
 strated the identity of Shields with Johnson. 
 To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but 
 Johnson's old crony, the man who drew the chart 
 of his tattoo marks, was at length discovered in 
 Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he 
 collected, the point was satisfactorily made out. 
 It was, of course, most important in another re- 
 spect, as establishing Margaret's claims on the 
 Linkheaton estate. 
 
 The discovery of the body of Johnson (or 
 Shields) in the snow was proved by our old friends 
 Bill and Tommy. 
 
 The prisoner was recognised by Mrs. Gullick as 
 the sailor gentleman who had been with Johnson 
 on the last night of his life. In spite of the differ- 
 ence of dress, and of appearance caused by the 
 absence of beard, — for Cranley was now clean 
 shaved, — Mrs. Gullick was positive as to his 
 voice and as to his eyebrows, which were pecu- 
 liarly black and mobile. 
 
 Barton, who was called next, and whose evi- 
 dence excited the keenest interest, identified the 
 prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be 
 arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and 
 Wright, and whom he had known as Cranley. 
 His medical evidence was given at considerable 
 length, and need not be produced in full detail. 
 On examining the body of Richard Johnson, his 
 attention had naturally been directed chiefly to 
 the tattooings. He had for some years been
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. IQI 
 
 deeply interested, as an ethnologist, in the tat- 
 tooed marks of various races. He had found 
 many curious examples on the body of the dead 
 man. Most of the marks were obviously old ; 
 but in a very unusual place, generally left blank — 
 namely, behind and under the right shoulder — 
 he had discovered certain markings of an irregular 
 character, clearly produced by an inexperienced 
 hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had 
 not healed, and were slightly discoloured. They 
 could not, from their position, possibly have been 
 produced by the man himself. Microscopic exami- 
 nations of these marks, in which the colouring 
 matter was brown, not red or blue, as on the rest 
 of the body, showed that this colouring matter 
 was of a character familiar to the witness as a 
 physiologist and scientific traveller. It was the 
 Woorali, or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians 
 of Guiana. 
 
 Asked to explain the nature of this poison to 
 the Court, the witness said that its " principle " 
 (to use the term of the old medical writers) had 
 not yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it 
 ever been compounded by Europeans. He had 
 seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who com- 
 bined the juice of the Woorali vine with that of 
 certain bulbous plants, with certain insects, and 
 with the poison fangs of two serpents, boiling the 
 whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally 
 straining off a thick brown paste, which, when 
 perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of 
 their arrows. The poison might be swallowed 
 by a healthy man without fatal results. But if 
 introduced into the system through a wound, 
 the poison would act almost instantaneously, 
 and defy analysis. Its effect was to sever, as it 
 were, the connection between the nerves and the 
 muscles, and the muscles used in respiration being 
 
 13 *
 
 10,2 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 thus gradually paralysed, death followed within a 
 brief time, proportionate to the size of the victim, 
 man or animal, and the strength of the dose. 
 
 Traces of this poison, then, the witness had 
 found in the fresh tattoo marks on Johnson's body. 
 The witness now produced the sharp wooden 
 needle, the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm, 
 which he had found among Johnson's tattooing 
 materials, in the upper chamber of the Hit or Miss. 
 This needle had been, he said, the tip of one of the 
 arrows used for their blow pipes, by the Macoushi 
 of Guiana. 
 
 Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette 
 case, the instrument of his cheating at baccarat, 
 which Cranley had left in the club on the evening 
 of his detection. He showed that the case had 
 contained a small crystal receptacle, intended to 
 hold opium. This crystal had been broken by 
 Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the 
 office of Martin and Wright. But crumbs of the 
 poison, — " Woorali," or " Ourali," — perfectly dry, 
 remained in this receptacle. It was thus clear 
 that Cranley, himself a great traveller, was pos- 
 sessed of the rare and perilous drug. 
 
 The medical evidence having been heard, and 
 confirmed in its general bearing by various ex- 
 perts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe 
 cross-examination, William Winter was called. 
 
 There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and 
 partly paralysed man was borne in on a kind of 
 litter, and accommodated in the witness-box. 
 
 "Where were you," asked the counsel for the 
 prosecution, when the officer had sworn the wit- 
 ness, " at eleven o'clock on the night of February 
 7th?" 
 
 " I was on the roof of the Hit or Miss tavern." 
 
 " On which part of the roof? " 
 
 " On the ledge below the dormer window at the
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I93 
 
 back part of the house, facing the waste ground 
 behind the plank fence." 
 
 " Will you tell the Court what you saw while 
 you were in that position?" 
 
 Winter's face was flushed with excitement ; but 
 his voice, though thin, was clear as he said : 
 
 " There was a light streaming through the dormer 
 window beside which I was lying, and I looked in." 
 
 "What did you see?" 
 
 " I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, 
 on which were bottles and glasses, and two men, 
 one seated, the other standing." 
 
 " Would you recognise either man if you saw 
 him?" 
 
 " I recognise the man who was seated, in the pri- 
 soner at the bar ; but at that time he wore a beard." 
 
 "Tell the Court what happened." 
 
 " The men were facing me. One of them — the 
 prisoner — was naked to the waist. His breast 
 was tattooed. The other — the man who stood up 
 — was touching him with a needle, which he ap- 
 plied, again and again, to a saucer on the table." 
 
 " Could you hear what they said ? " 
 
 " I could ; for the catch of the lattice window 
 had not caught, and there was a slight chink open." 
 
 " You listened?" 
 
 " I could not help it ; the scene was so strange. 
 I heard the man with the needle give a sigh of 
 relief, and say, ' There, it 's finished, and a pretty 
 job too, though I say it.' The other said, 
 'You have done it beautifully, Dicky; it's a most 
 interesting art. Now, just out of curiosity, let me 
 tattoo you a bit.' The other man laughed, and 
 took off his coat and shirt while the other dressed. 
 ' There 's scarce an inch of me plain,' he said, 
 1 but you can try your hand here,' pointing to the 
 lower part of his shoulder." 
 " What happened then ?"
 
 194 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 " They were both standing up now. I saw the 
 prisoner take out something sharp ; his face was 
 deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He 
 began touching him with the sharp object, and kept 
 chaffing all the time. This lasted, I should think, 
 about five minutes, when the face of the man who 
 was being tattooed grew very red. Then he 
 swayed a little, backward and forward, then he 
 stretched out his hands like a blind man, and said, 
 in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralysed, 
 ' I 'm very cold ; I can't shiver ! ' Then he fell 
 down heavily, and his body made one or two con- 
 vulsive movements. That was all." 
 
 " What did the prisoner do?" 
 
 " He looked like death. He seized the bottle 
 on the table, poured out half a tumbler full of the 
 stuff in it, drank it off, and then fell into a chair, 
 and laid his face between his hands. He appeared 
 ill, or alarmed, but the colour came back into his 
 cheek after a third or fourth glass. Then I saw 
 him go to the sleeping man and bend over him, 
 listening apparently to his breathing. Then he 
 shook him several times, as if trying to arouse 
 him. But the man lay like a log. Finally, about 
 half-an-hour after what I have described, he 
 opened the door and went out. He soon returned, 
 took up the sleeping man in his arms — his weight 
 seemed lighter than you would expect — and carried 
 him out. From the roof I saw him push the door 
 in the palisade leading into the waste land, a door 
 which I myself had left open an hour before. It 
 was not light enough to see what he did there ; 
 but he soon returned alone and walked away." 
 
 Such was the sum of Winter's evidence, which, 
 if accepted, entirely corroborated Barton's theory 
 of the manner of the murder. 
 
 In cross-examination, Winter was asked the 
 very natural question —
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I95 
 
 " How did you come to find yourself on the 
 roof of the Hit or Miss late at night ?" 
 
 Winter nearly rose from his litter, his worn 
 face flushed, his eye sparkling. 
 
 "Sir, I flew l" 
 
 There was a murmur and titter through the 
 court, which was, of course, instantly suppressed. 
 
 " You flew ! What do you mean by saying that 
 you flew ? " 
 
 " I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, 
 for thirty years, I have laboured at and striven to 
 bring to perfection. On that one night, as I was 
 experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside 
 the waste land bordering on the Hit or Miss, the 
 machine actually worked, and I was projected in 
 the machine, as it were, to some height in the air, 
 coming down with a fluttering motion, like a falling 
 feather, on the roof of the Hit or Miss." 
 
 Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled 
 with infinite expression at the jury. 
 
 " My lord," said the counsel for the prosecution, 
 noting the smile, and the significant grin with 
 which it was reflected on the countenances of the 
 twelve good men and true, " I may state that 
 we are prepared to bring forward a large mass 
 of scientific evidence — including a well-known 
 man of science, the editor of Wisdom, a popular 
 journal which takes all knowledge for its province 
 — to prove that there is nothing physically im- 
 possible in the facts deposed to by this witness. 
 He is at present suffering, as you see, from a 
 serious accident caused by the very machine of 
 which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, 
 with a working model, to the Court." 
 
 " It certainly requires corroboration," said the 
 judge. " At present, so far as I am aware, it is 
 contrary to scientific experience. You can prove, 
 perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these
 
 I96 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 machines have only to take one step further to 
 become practical modes of locomotion. But that 
 is the very step qui coiite. Nothing but direct 
 evidence that the step has been taken, — that a 
 flying machine, on this occasion, actually flew 
 (they appear to be styled vol antes, a 11011 volando), — 
 would really help your case, and establish the 
 credibility of this witness." 
 
 " With your lordship's learned remarks," re- 
 plied the counsel for the Crown, " I am not the 
 less ready to agree, because I have an actual eye- 
 witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to 
 by the witness, but reported it to several persons, 
 who are in court, on the night of its occurrence, 
 so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the 
 common talk of the neighbourhood." 
 
 " Ah ! that is another matter," said the judge. 
 
 " Call Eliza Gullick," said the counsel. 
 
 Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsy- 
 ing, with eagerness, but perfect self-possession. 
 
 After displaying an almost technical appreci- 
 ation of the nature of an oath, Eliza was asked : 
 
 " You remember the night of the 7th of 
 February ? " 
 
 " I remember it very well, sir." 
 
 " Why do you remember it so well, Eliza ? " 
 
 " Becos such a mort o' things happened, sir, 
 that night." 
 
 " Will you tell his lordship what happened ? " 
 
 " Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a 
 supper, us himps, my lord, at the Hilarity ; for he 
 said " 
 
 " Never mind what he said, tell us what hap- 
 pened as you were coming home." 
 
 " Well, sir, it was about eleven o'clock at night, 
 and I was turning the lane into the Hit or Miss, 
 when I 'heard an awful flapping and hissing and 
 whirring, like wings working by steam, in the
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. I97 
 
 waste ground at the side of the lane. And, as I 
 was listening, — oh, it frightens me now to think of 
 it, — oh, sir " 
 
 " Well, don't be alarmed, my good child ! 
 What occurred ? " 
 
 " A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, 
 flew up over my head, higher than the houses. 
 And then — did you ever see them Japanese toys, 
 my lord, them things with two feathers and a 
 bit of Tndia-rubber as you twist round and round 
 and toss them up and they fly " 
 
 " Well, my girl, I have seen them." 
 
 " Well, just as if it had been one of them things 
 settling down, the bird's wings turned round and 
 fluttered and shook, and at last it all lighted, quite 
 soft like, on the roof of our house, the Hit or Miss. 
 And there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, 
 and looked out o' the window, but they wouldn't 
 none o' them believe me, my lord." 
 
 There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza 
 finished this extraordinary confirmation of Winter's 
 evidence, and wove the net inextricably round the 
 prisoner. 
 
 Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing 
 sound, as if something heavy had dropped a 
 short distance on some hard object. 
 
 All present turned their eyes from staring at 
 Eliza to the place whence the sound had come. 
 
 The prisoner's head had fallen forward on the 
 railing in front of him. 
 
 One of the officers of the Court touched him on 
 the shoulder. 
 
 He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not. 
 
 The faint heart of the man had fluttered with 
 its last pulsation. The evidence had sufficed for 
 him without verdict or sentence. As he had slain 
 his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a 
 moment !
 
 ig8 
 
 THE MARK OF CAIN. 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 N D what became of them all ? 
 
 He who does not tell, on the plea 
 that he is "competing with Life," 
 which never knits up a plot, but leaves 
 all the threads loose, acts unfairly. 
 
 Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, 
 and the happy couple are visiting the great 
 Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of 
 the Unemployed, who should lead happy lives 
 under the peaceful sway of happy Mrs. Maitland. 
 
 Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the 
 Endowment of Research, in the case of Winter, 
 who has quite recovered from his injuries, and 
 still hopes to fly. But he has never trusted him- 
 self again on his machine, which, moreover, has 
 never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist 
 who once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac's 
 novel, has never recovered the creative moment. 
 But he makes very interesting models, in which 
 Mrs. Barton's little boy begins to take a lively 
 interest. 
 
 Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advance- 
 ment unconnected with the British Drama, clings 
 to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick main- 
 tains, she has a hereditary genius. 
 
 "We hear," says the Athenaum, "that the long 
 promised edition of Demetrius of Scepsis, by Mr. 
 Bielby of St. Gatien's, is in the hands of the 
 delegates of the Clarendon Press." 
 
 But Fiction herself is revolted by the improba- 
 bility of the statement that an Oxford Don has 
 finished his magnum opus ! 
 
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