His jaws are working till the foam
Is churned like ocean spray,
His lurid eyes have gleams within
Unlike all light of day.
But yestermorn he sallied forth,
He and his mate, to seize
Some ragged bone or sucking babe,
His ravenous brood t' appease.
The she-wolf slain, he fled amain

To hunger and despair,

And strewed the limbs of his torn cubs

Last night about his lair.

Ho! bring the wolf-staves from the wall,
See that your knives are keen;
Come, men of hearts and sinews strong,

No child's-play this, I ween.

Send through the land and make them come, This touches great and small,

And bid the good old squires of Gwent

To meet in Goytrey Hall.

Rides Williams from Llangibby,

Rides Lewis from St. Pierre ;

And Morgan, for the nobler game,
Quits his ancestral deer.

The Herbert race of fiery souls
Could not be absent then,
And Cliffords feel their Norman blood
Rush through their hearts again.
The wolf-dog's bay was heard that day
Through many a wood and glen,
Three times they swam the flooded Usk,
Three times they topped Garnwen.
Mamhilod sees them reckless ride
Her sloping sides along,
Up Trefthyn hill the grey wolf still
Swings onward fierce and strong,
Till mad to find that still behind
The rout and turmoil swell,
Through brake and flood to Goytrey wood
He rushes fierce and fell:
Scraping his paws, grinding his jaws,
Fresh lightning in his eye,
Both hound and man sháli shrewdly know
When comes his turn to die.
With glistening teeth and blazing eyes,
And with a panther's spring,
The foremost hunter sees him leap
Within his wolf-staff's swing.
A shout, a blow, and writhing low,
The monster's spun around;
But darting up he grips his foe,
And both are on the ground.
Man, dogs, and beast in thicket dense
Struck, wrestled, bit, and tore,
Till rolled against a jutting crag

The panting hunter bore

The wolf's head back, and brake his neck,
Dead the last robber lay;

But Herbert went from the grey wolf's grip
Lame to his dying day.

Now hang the wolf-staves on the wall
To take them down no more,

Save when our sons would tell their sons
Of stalwart deeds of yore.

Shut out the storm, we've had enough,
Heap logs upon the flame,

* A few centuries ago, in both Monmouthshire and Breconshire, wolf-staves were no unimportant items in the list of household implements; and in the wills of the inhabitants were frequently made the subject of special bequest.

CHAPTER XLVI. MIGHT HAVE BEEN
EXPECTED.

TIME went by, and still there came to Gerrard's Hall no tidings of Lawrence Barbour. Had his place never known him-had he never married a wife-had children never been born to him, he could not have dropped out of his old haunts more completely. Never in banks or warehouses was he now beheld; never did he bend his steps due East and hold discourse with Mr. Perkins about the best means to cheat the analyzers-about the safest mode of manufacturing some fresh counterfeit. When he had to come into the City he drove there in a brougham, and hurried from carriage to office like a man in dread of being arrested. When he walked about the West End, he chose unfrequented streets and silent squares. Had it been possible for him to avoid doing so, not an hour would he have stayed on English ground.

Abroad he could forget his sin; at home it seemed continually to be staring him in the face. "You have deserted your wife!" the very newsboys seemed to shout in his ear. "What about Olivine?" his conscience never ceased whispering; "is this the way in which you fulfil your promise? Do you forget it? you said you would be all to her-all her Idead uncle was. How long is it since you have seen your wife? How long is it since you have heard from her? What is she doing what is she thinking-what is she suffering?" and then Lawrence turned fiercely on his second self, and bade it be still. "She is happier without me," he decided. "She has her fortune-her children. If she wanted to hear from me, she would write; as it is, not a line-no, not one."

After awhile the whim seized him that he would go and see his father-the old man whom he had long neglected-and he started accordingly for Mallingford, only to find when he arrived there the Clay farm-house shut,

and no one living in it except a care-taker.

"Mr. Barbour was gone," this person said; "gone with a young lady dressed in mourning, who came down one day and persuaded him to go back to London with her. Mr. Barbour had been very ill," the man further informed Lawrence, "and my Lord Lallard had ridden over to inquire about him regular, and had sent his own carriage to take him and the young lady to the station."

"And my brother?" Lawrence inquired. "He was here in the summer time, sir, but I have not seen him since. They do say as how he is going to be married, but like as not it is only talk."

"Why was I not told of my father's illness and removal?" Lawrence angrily exclaimed.

"I am sure I cannot tell, sir," answered the man; "only I did hear him say something about casting you off as he did the earth at Mallingford. He was in a terrible state, but the young lady cried and took on so dreadful, that he gave in at last; and that was all, sir-that was all, indeed."

Having culled which pleasant herbs to flavour the dish of his life for a day or two, Lawrence walked back to the station, where he met Lord Lallard face to face.

There had been a time when his Lordship would have greeted his old acquaintance cordially, but now he merely bowed coldly to the younger man, and sedulously avoided taking his seat in the carriage Lawrence selected, while the Rector, who came bustling on to the platform a few minutes before the train started, and exchanged confidences with Lord Lallard before subsiding into a secondclass compartment, as befitted his means rather than his inclination, declined to see his old pupil at all. Lawrence, as a repentant prodigal, might have been not merely tolerated, but considered interesting. The picture of a sinner eating husks and tending swine, clothed in vile raiment, has ever had charms for those who are averse to the idea of vice lording it in purple and fine linen; but this sinner not merely was above husks, but travelled first-class, and had his Times and a railway rug, and happened to be very well clad indeed: for all of which reasons the Rector felt it his duty to pass him by, and Lawrence never blamed him for his neglect.

He picked no quarrel with the world in those days for its treatment of him. Rather, perhaps, though its coldness was as salt rubbed into an open wound, he thought better of the world than he had ever done. For the first time in his life, he found that money was not everything-that it could not purchase everything that although it might gild the exterior of vice, it could not, in the eyes of honest men and women, make vice appear like

virtue. Now he was wealthy-now he was regarded by commercial circles as one of Fortune's favourites. Since he parted company with Percy Forbes he had touched nothing but what repaid him three or four hundred per cent. At last he had found the true Eldorado, the alchemist's secret. Under his touch the most unpromising ventures became perfect mines of gold. He was regarded as a lucky man-one of those with whom the former Rothschild would have loved to be associated. Speculators sought him, capitalists bore him off in triumph to dinner, clerks were deferential to him, plodding business folks discoursed to one another of Lawrence Barbour's rise, and sighed. How he had entered London at twenty without a sovereign in his pocket, and risen long before middle age to the position he had attained-these things were talked of in omnibus and steamer, in counting-houses and coffee-rooms; and yet, the old friends who had given him their hands and bade him God speed in the days of his struggling apprenticeship to business, would scarcely acknowledge him now. He had sinned, and not even his reputed wealth could cover that sin away from the sight of those in whose eyes most of all he desired to stand well. These things passed through Lawrence's mind as the train steamed out of the station, and sped away past Mallingford End, and so on to London. There were two strangers in the same compartment with him who had journeyed from further down the line, and when the woods of Mallingford came in sight, the pair began talking of the property and its recent occupier. The Barbours, Mr. Alwyn, Mr. Gainswoode, all these persons were discussed as people do discuss such matters, heedless of who may be listening; and by degrees the talk came round to the child minor and Mrs. Gainswoode herself. Then Lawrence's own name was mentioned. Reading the Times with apparent interest, he heard his rise described, his position canvassed. There were hard things said of him, and harder of Etta. At the moment he would have given all he was worth to have possessed courage sufficient to say, "I am Lawrence Barbour, and I warn you, at your peril, to speak another word against Mrs. Gainswoode ; "but he could not do it; and at last the conversation drifted to other subjects until Shoreditch was reached and the passengers disappeared, some in cabs, some on foot, some by omnibus, to their respective destinations.

Never before, perhaps, had Lawrence felt such a repugnance to returning home, and for this reason, rejecting all offers of conveyance, he crossed Shoreditch, and, railway-rug on arm, walked slowly along Wilson Street and made his way thence to Clerkenwell, through

which enlivening locality he was proceeding, when he met the last person he desired to see, or expected to see in such a neighbourhood, face to face.

"Good evening," said Percy Forbes, for the recognition was mutual as it was sudden, and he made a movement as though to stop.

"Good evening," muttered Lawrence Barbour, quickening his pace and hurrying on. For a second Percy Forbes looked back after the retreating figure; but then he pursued his way Cityward

There is in Clerkenwell, just at the corner of Elm Street, a triangular bit of ground, which, in common with the site occupied by the House of Correction, is called, as if in a sort of ghastly jest, "Mount Pleasant." As he was crossing the open part of this triangle, Lawrence became conscious that some one was running behind him, and half turning to see who the person in such a hurry might be, he again beheld his old partner.

Give me a minute, Barbour," Percy entreated, and Lawrence agreeing, the pair turned out of the road and walked slowly together up the left-hand side of the triangle.

I want to ask you something," Mr. Forbes went on, "something that perhaps you will say is no business of mine. Did you get a letter from your wife, either during the time you were abroad or else immediately after your return ?

"Can you remember its contents? "I did not see them; but I know a portion of the letter was to the effect that Mrs. Barbour thought some pecuniary arrangement of the kind you desired might be made, and that I was willing, so far as practicable, to meet her and your views."

"You advised her to write, and offer to advance the sum required?"

"On the contrary, it was only because of her grief and entreaties I yielded even to the extent I have mentioned."

"You cannot tell me anything more which was in the letter ?"

"No; but she wrote a second and sent it by hand, thinking, perhaps, the first had miscarried. After I passed you I thought I ought not to let the opportunity slip of knowing for certain whether either of the letters had reached you."

"No," was the reply, they never didthey never did."

"Or will you write, and tell her yourself?" "No; it is too late, Forbes: all too late." "Your father is at Gerrard's Hall now," Percy volunteered.

"So I understand," was Lawrence's comment; but he never asked if his father were better; how his wife was; whether the children were well.

Then you have no other message?" "None," Lawrence replied, and the two parted-Percy to pursue his way to Goodman's Fields, and Lawrence to walk slowly onwards to the place he called his home.

"I will not ask her anything about it," he decided; "she would lie to me; and what is the good of a scene? There is no use in looking back; and, besides, if I had got the letter, my road was then chosen past recall."

That was it; the road he had traversed he could never retrace. And now, though God knew he was sick of himself and his life, and the fetters he had woven around his actions, yet he spoke but the simple truth to Percy Forbes, when he averred that the knowledge was come to him too late. She had woven her meshes round him-he had voluntarily walked into her web, and there he must be content to abide. He could not leave Etta as he had left Olivine. They were very different women to have to deal with. The wife was patient, and gentle, and sweet-the widow a very devil when her temper was roused, or her will opposed. Beyond all things Lawrence had learned to dread a scene. Besides, as he said, what was the use? Still time went by, and to

What indeed! Gerrard's Hall letter. Percy

came neither message nor Forbes had told Olivine of his interview with her husband, and for days afterwards she watched for the arrival of the post with sickening anxiety. "It will come to-day," she thought to herself each morning when she awoke; "it will come to-morrow" she said each night when she laid her head on the pillow; but the expected missive did not come for all that neither in the day, nor on the morrow, nor in the forenoon, nor in the evening, came any tidings from the man she had loved so faithfully and so well.

It was summer again. Over the grass the lime trees trailed their long branches; down the glades the sheep browsed their fill; by the lake, on which the water-lilies floated, were parterres filled with all the thousand and one flowers that open in the bright June weather

that go to make the June air rich and heavy with all delicious odours; and yet there came no tidings to Olivine, who, dressed still in mourning, partly because her uncle's memory remained green in her heart, and partly because she had no spirit to array her

self in glad colours while her husband was absent, sat in the morning-room which commanded a view of the flower-garden and the smooth turf beyond-of the trees that further away skirted the domain, and of the road to London, along which her thoughts were ever wandering to the man who had deserted her.

Beside one of the windows stood Percy Forbes, with a worn weary look in his face, with a troubled expression in his eyes. What he had come to be to her during that period of wearing suspense, I could scarcely tell; while what she had become to him, Percy himself was almost afraid to think. If a couple of days passed without his entering her sitting-room and occupying his accustomed place, Olivine grew restless and unhappy. Once he had stayed away for a whole week: he made a vow to himself he would not see her so constantly; he swore to his own soul he would keep out of the way of temptation and refrain from making her wretched; and the result was, that when they did meet, she told him with tears in her eyes, how she thought everybody was deserting her-how, if he forgot her in her trouble, she might as well, but for the children's sake, die at once. After that Percy Forbes took his resolution, and now standing beside the window, he was considering how he should best say that which he wanted to say to her.

"I will write to him once again," she resumed after a pause, in continuation of their previous conversation-" once again, and send it to his office, where that woman cannot tamper with his letters. Do you not think I might do so?"

"There is nothing in the world to prevent your doing so," Percy answered.

"Is it not the best course for me to pursue?" she pleaded gently, for his tone was not encouraging.

"That depends entirely on what you mean to say in your letter," he replied.

I mean to ask him to come back," she said, with a terrible sorrow in her tone. "What else can I say to him? He does not want money, he does not want me; yet still, for the sake of his children, perhaps she paused, and looked in Percy's face, as though expecting him to help her out with the remainder of her sentence; but finding he remained silent, "What would you say if you were in my place?" she added, "what would you do if you were a woman, and Lawrence your husband ?”

"I would offer him a divorce," Percy answered, as he crossed the room and came close to the spot she occupied. "And that is what you ought to do, for your own sake, and his

sake, and the sake of the children he has deserted."

"No-No-NO," she cried, in a gradual crescendo; and she stretched out her hands, as though to push the idea from her.

“You

"But I say Yes," Percy persisted. ought to give him the chance of marrying Mrs. Gainswoode, and retrieving his position."

"Do you think he would marry her?" Olivine inquired, with a gasp of despair. Everything seemed going from her at the moment life, and all it had once held for her. A wife, and yet a widow-a mother, and the father of her children the husband of another woman! she could not at once seize the whole horror of the idea Percy had put into her mind; but the horror overshadowed her, notwithstanding. "Do you mean to say you really believe I ought to leave him free-to marry her-to marry her?" He stood a little behind her chair, and never answered her by a word.

"If I ought to do it, I will try," she went on, speaking in a faint low voice. "If you say it is right, I will try. I will think of it. I cannot judge, it is so hard. Do not tell me it is right-to put all hope from me for ever." But still Percy made no reply.

"Then what?" she asked. "ThenThen came the answer so long withheld, not in any form of words, but in a mad passionate kiss. In an instant the barrier of years was broken down, and the love of the man's heart found vent-the weir he had erected to keep the waters from flooding her happiness and making a wreck of the free intimacy, of the unreserved confidence, which had been between them, gave way, and the torrent of his repressed affection burst from his lips at last.

Clasping her to his heart, he told her all: how he had loved her-how he had always loved her-how he had suffered-how he had endured-how, so long as there was even a chance of Lawrence returning to his allegiance, he had refrained-how, if she could but obtain her freedom, he would devote his life to her, the one only love of his heart. So the flood of the poor sinner's passion poured over her, while she unresistingly lay in his arms, and listened like one in a dream, never striving to stem the stream-never trying to hinder his kissing brow and cheek and lip till at last