Peccavi. Hornung Ernest William

flat-chested, leaden-eyed; too weary for much grief, as he was too bitter; in her thin arms an infant not four days old.

      Musk put himself in her path.

      "Stop walking!"

      "That'll set him off again," sighed Mrs. Musk, though not before she had obeyed.

      "I don't care," said Jasper. "That can cry till that die," he added brutally, as the fit returned; "and the sooner the better. Hold it up a bit. There, now! I want to have a look at the brat. I want to see who that's like!"

      "It's like poor Molly," whimpered the grandmother, shedding tears that she could neither check nor hide.

      Musk thumped his stick on the floor.

      "Molly? Molly? You let me hear that name again! Haven't I told you once and for all never to lay your tongue to that name, in my hearing or behind my back, as long as you live? Then don't you forget it; and none o' your lies. That's no more like her than that's like you. But a look of somebody it have, though I can't for the life of me think who. Wait a bit. Give me time. That'll come – that'll come!"

      But the thin shrill screaming continued till the little red face grew livid and wrinkled almost beyond resemblance to its kind; then Musk relinquished his futile scrutiny, and signed to his wife to resume the walking, but himself remained in the room. And he leant on his stick as he had leant on it at the funeral; but here in his house he wore his hat; and from under its broad brim he followed them, backward and forward, to and fro, with smouldering eyes.

      "Do you know what I've vowed?" he presently went on. "Do you know the oath I took, there at that open grave, when all the tomfoolery was over, and that Jesuit jerry-builder had taken his hook?"

      "I'm sure I don't," sighed Mrs. Musk, as the child lay once more still against her withered bosom.

      "I stood there," said Jasper, "and I swore I'd find the man. And I swore I'd tear his heart out when I've found him. And I'll do both!"

      His voice rose so swiftly to so fierce a pitch that the woman started violently, and the infant wailed again. Instantly the room shook, and with one stride, paid for by a spasm of pain, the husband towered above the wife; and this time it was a heavy hand upon her shrunk and shrinking shoulder that put a stop to the walk.

      "Do you know who it is?" he cried. "My God, I believe you do!"

      "I don't, indeed!"

      "She never told you?"

      "God knows she did not."

      "Or anybody else?"

      "I don't know."

      "But you think – you think! I see it in your face. Who is it you think she may have told? I'll soon find out from him or her; trust me to wring that out!"

      For answer, the woman subsided in sobs upon the horsehair sofa, rocking herself and the baby in her grief and terror. "You'll be that angry with me," she moaned; "you'll be right mad!"

      "Oh, no, I sha'n't," said Musk, in a kindlier voice. "I'm not so bad as all that, though this do fare to make a man crazy. Tell away, old woman, and don't you be afraid."

      "Oh, Jasper, it was when you were gone to Lakenhall for the doctor – that last time!"

      "Well?"

      "She knew the end was near. Poor thing! Poor thing!"

      "What did she say?"

      "That she'd die more happier if only she could speak – if only I would send – "

      "Not for Carlton?"

      The wife could only nod in her fear and desperation.

      "You sent for that man the moment my back was turned?"

      "Oh, I knew that'd make you right wild – I knew – I knew!"

      Musk controlled himself by an effort.

      "That don't. That sha'n't. I'll have it out of him, that's all; he's not the Church o' Rome yet! Go on. Go on."

      "I went myself. No one knew. I left her alone time I was gone."

      "And you brought him back with you?"

      "Well, he got here first. He ran all the way."

      "He knew better than to let me catch him. Jesuit! How long was he with her?"

      "Not long, Jasper, not long indeed!"

      "And you heard nothing?"

      "Not a word. I stayed downstairs. I had to promise her that before I went. She had something to say to Mr. Carlton that nobody else must know."

      "But somebody else shall!" said Jasper grimly. "That was it, you may depend; you should have listened at the door. But that make no matter. Somebody else is going to know before he's many minutes older!"

      And an ugly smile broadened on the thick-set face; but the woman gasped. Quick as thought the child was on the sofa, the grandmother on her feet. Trembling and terrified, she stood in her husband's path.

      "Jasper! You're never going up to the rectory?"

      "I am, though – this minute!"

      "Oh, Jasper!"

      "Do you let me by."

      "But I promised you should never know! You've made me break my solemn word! He'll know I've broken it!"

      "Yes, I'm going to learn him a thing or two. Will you let me by?"

      "She'll know – too – wherever she has gone to!"

      "You'd better not keep me no more."

      "Jasper! Jasper! On her death-bed I promised her – "

      "Out of my light!"

      III

      A CONFESSION

      The rector's study was on the ground floor, facing south. It was a long room, but narrow, and so low that the present incumbent, who stood six-feet-two, had contracted a stoop out of continual and instinctive dread of the ancient beams that scored his study ceiling, combined with a besetting habit of pacing the floor. There were two doors; one led into the garden, providing parishioners with immediate access to the rector when he was not to be found at the church; the other terminated an inner passage. Both were of immemorial oak, and, like the lattice casement over the writing table, both rattled in the least wind. Such was the room which the Reverend Robert Carlton haunted when driven or detained indoors: rickety, ill-lighted, and draughty when it was not close, it was still a habitable hole enough, and picturesque in spite of its occupant.

      Optional surroundings afford a fair clue to the superficial man, but no real key to character; thus Mr. Carlton's furniture suggested a soul devoid of the æsthetic sense. He had the sense in all its fineness, but it found expression in another place. Like many ritualists, Carlton was a religious æsthete; none more fastidious in the service of the sanctuary; on the other hand, after the fashion of his peers in two Churches, the trappings of his own life were severely simple. They had nearly all been purchased second-hand, those wire-covered shelves and the books they bore, that oak settle, and the huge arm-chair filled with miscellaneous lumber. Two baize-covered forms were there for the accommodation of various classes which the rector held; a prayer desk faced east in the one orderly corner of the room. Only three pictures hung on the walls; a Holy Family and Guido Reni's St. Sebastian, ordinary silver prints in Oxford frames, mementoes of a pilgrimage to Rome; and an ancient cricket eleven, faded from age, and fly-blown for long want of a glass. There were also a couple of tin shields, bearing the heraldic devices of Robert Carlton's public school and of his Oxford college, while a crucifix hung over the prayer desk. Among the books two volumes on Building Construction might have been remarked upon the settle, together with a tattered copy of Parker's Introduction to Gothic Architecture; among the lumber, a mason's trowel and a cold-chisel. Lastly, the study smelt, but did not reek, of common birdseye.

      Jasper Musk, passing the open lattice, caught the parson hastily rising from his knees, not at the prayer desk, but beside his writing table, upon which a large book lay open. A newspaper lay on top of the book when Musk was admitted some moments after he had knocked.

      He