stopping, and gently brushing away with her
hand some specks of dust that lay on the
collar of his coat. "I have suffered so much
and suffered so long, that the heaviest
disappointments pass lightly over me now."

"I won't hear you say it!" cried Uncle
Joseph. "You give me shocks I can't bear
when you talk to me in this way. You shall
have no more disappointments—- no, you
shall not! I, Joseph Buschmann, the Obstinate,
the Pig-Headed, I say it!—-"

"The day when I shall have no more
disappointments, uncle, is not far off, now. Let
me wait a little longer, and endure a little
longer: I have learned to be patient, and to
hope for nothing. Fearing and failing, fearing
and failing—that has been my life, ever
since I was a young woman—the life I have
become inured to by this time. If you are
surprised, as I know you must be, at my not
possessing myself of the letter, when I had
the keys of the Myrtle Room in my hand, and
when no one was near to stop me, remember
the history of my life, and take that as an
explanation. Fearing and failing, fearing and
failing—if I told you all the truth, I could
tell no more than that. Let us walk on,
uncle."

The resignation in her voice and manner,
while she spoke, was the resignation of
despair. It gave her an unnatural self-possession,
which altered her, in the eyes of
Uncle Joseph, almost past recognition. He
looked at her in undisguised alarm.

"No!" he said, "we will not walk on;
we will walk back to the dungeon-house; we
will make another plan; we will try to get
at this devil's imp of a letter in some other
way. I care for no Munders, no
housekeepers, no Betzies—I! I care for nothing,
but the getting you the one thing you want,
and the taking you home again as easy in
your mind as I am myself. Come! let us go
back."

"It is too late to go back."

"How too late? Ah, dismal, dingy, dungeon-house
of the devil, how I hate you!"
cried Uncle Joseph, looking back over the
prospect, and shaking both his fists at Porthgenna
Tower.

"It is too late, uncle," she repeated. "Too
late, because the opportunity is lost; too
late, because if I could bring it back, I dare
not go near the Myrtle Room again. My
last hope was to change the hiding-place of
the letter—and that last hope I have given
up. I have only one object in life left now;
you may help me in it; but I cannot tell
you how, unless you will come on with me
at once—unless you will say nothing more
about going back to Porthgenna Tower."

Uncle Joseph began to expostulate. His
niece stopped him in the middle of a sentence,
by touching him on the shoulder and pointing
to a particular spot on the darkening slope
of the moor before them.

"Look!" she said, "there is somebody on
the path behind us. Is it a boy, or a
man?"

Uncle Joseph looked through the fading
light, and saw a figure at some little
distance. It seemed like the figure of a boy,
and he was apparently engaged in digging
on the moor.

"Let us turn round, and go on at once,"
pleaded Sarah, before the old man could
answer her. "I can't say what I want to
say to you, uncle, until we are safe under
shelter at the inn."

They went on, until they reached the
highest ground on the moor. There, they
stopped, and looked back again. The rest of
their way lay down hill; and the spot on
which they stood was the last point from
which a view could be obtained of Porthgenna
Tower.

"We have lost sight of the boy," said
Uncle Joseph, looking over the ground below
them.

Sarah's younger and sharper eyes bore
witness to the truth of her uncle's words--
the view over the moor was lonely now, in
every direction, as far as she could see.
Before going on again, she moved a little
away from the old man, and looked at the
tower of the ancient house, rising heavy and
black in the dim light, with the dark
sea-background stretching behind it like a wall.
"Never again!" she whispered to herself.
"Never, never, never again! Her eyes wandered
away to the church, and to the
cemetery-inclosure by its side, barely distinguishable
now in the shadows of the coming night.
"Wait for me a little longer," she said, looking
towards the burial-ground with straining
eyes, and pressing her hand on her bosom,
over the place where the book of Hymns
lay hid. "My wanderings are nearly at an
end: the day for my coming home again is
not far off!"

The tears filled her eyes, and shut out the
view. She rejoined her uncle, and, taking
his arm again, drew him rapidly a few steps
along the downward path—then checked
herself, as if struck by a sudden suspicion, and
walked back a few paces to the highest ridge
of the ground. "I am not sure," she said,
replying to her companion's look of surprise
—"I am not sure whether we have seen the
last yet of that boy who was digging on the
moor."

As the words passed her lips, a figure stole
out from behind one of the large fragments
of granite-rock which were scattered over
the waste on all sides of them. It was once
more the figure of the boy, and again he
began to dig, without the slightest apparent
reason, on the barren ground at his feet.

"Yes, yes, I see," said Uncle Joseph, as his
niece eagerly directed his attention to the
suspicious figure. "It is the same boy, and
he is digging still —and, if you please, what
of that?"

Sarah did not attempt to answer. "Let