But

I was poking in where I'd no concern. I've come into it somehow, and I don't ask on account of Miss, but because I'm like to be mixed up with the painting gentleman, Mr. Clayton. Now I'll just tell you the particulars."

Here Jack related how he had found Harry engaged in a struggle with Bradley in the ruin at Berry Pomeroy, and what followed.

"Now, you see, Miss, I am a labouring man," he continued, "and you'll naturally say what has such like as you to do with it? which is very good, only Mr. Clayton wants me to do with him, and it turns on this. I must be sure about his character, and if he has been getting Miss to meet him in the woods at night all by herself-”

"Stop," cried Alice eagerly, "I was with her, and our meeting with Mr. Clayton was an accident. We shouldn't have gone out at all, if we had dreamt of anyone being about."

"You just clear it all up in a minute," returned Jack, "I see how it was now, and

it's exact what Mr. Clayton said, only he was in a temper, and Mr. Bradley had set me up too; so we didn't come to an agreement. But now I won't keep you any longer, Miss Alley."

"I may tell Miss Letty about their fighting, I suppose ?" said Alice.

"Ah! then one thing leads to another, you see, and it will all come out."

"Very well," laughed Alice, "I will say nothing."

And she walked away with a friendly nod --for Jack, though but five years older than herself, had in her childhood often carried her in his arms.

"A lass is like a pitcher of water," thought Jack as he moved in the other direction," she's always full to the top, and

if

you tell her anything, it's like dropping a stone in the pitcher, she brims over with it. There's this difference-you can see to the bottom of a pitcher, but I could never see to the bottom even of a lass's eyes." And he murmured aloud-" I wonder if I shall ever get that twenty-five acres at Cockington."

And as the words dropped from his lips, Jack cast a glance behind, for a parting glimpse of Alice, before she turned the curve of the road. He was caught in the act; for Alice, too, at this moment, looked round, and then tripped off, while he pursued his way with a graver brow.

CHAPTER XVII.

RALPH TAKES A BOLD STEP,

Ir was late in the day when Bradley returned from his expedition to Staffordshire. During his absence, Letty was continually in his mind, and all his thoughts were fired by her image. Blended with this, rose the remembrance of her midnight meeting with Harry, and the subsequent struggle between Harry and himself, so nearly fatal to both. Then he fell into a whirl of feeling, making him alternately the prey of jealousy, rage, and remorse. The preference which he conceived Letty to entertain for the artist drove him frantic. At the same time his conscience rebuked the spirit which had raised his hand against Harry's life; and as religion thus reasserted its sway, he wrestled

with his hatred, not to cast it away, but to keep it down. The struggle mingled with his prayers, which were long and vehement, bursting from him on his pillow, when he awoke in the night, and running in his mind through the day. He prayed for success in his suit, imploring that Letty's heart might be turned to him, that she might love him with the love that Rachel bore Jacob, while he, through grace, should make her comeliness a reason for thankfulness, and even a means to edify, as that of Esther became to Ahasuerus. But, pray when he would, the phantom of his hatred sprang up with his words, as if to prevent their utterance; and though he closed his eyes, and put a strain on his thoughts, he never wholly shut it out.

The morning after his return, he heard a rumour of the Squire's design of taking up the Orchard farm, and this gave his thoughts a new direction. He was to see Mr. Granby at ten o'clock, and meanwhile he had to prepare his accounts for inspection, so that time did not permit of an early visit to the