rode into his house and, flinging the reins to his groom, went upstairs. A big envelope marked "Urgent" was on the table, and Ma Mie was there, with a troubled look on her face. As he came in she could contain herself no longer, and with a cry flung herself on his breast and called out: "They have found out! they have found out! Fly, Hawkshawe!" "What the devil does this all mean?" said Hawkshawe angrily, and yet with a sickening foreboding in his heart. He snatched up the great brown envelope and read with whitening lips. It was, in brief, an order from government suspending him pending certain inquiries that were to be made, and adding as a rider that he was not to leave Pazobin until the final orders of the governor had been communicated to him. He did not notice a small note that dropped out from the official inclosure, but Ma Mie stooped and, picking it up, handed it to him. It contained a few lines from Peregrine telling him to keep up heart; that he, Jackson, was sure the charges were trumped up and would fall to the ground. The letter closed with an earnest assurance of sympathy and a brief intimation that his successor, Phipson, had already arrived, and was of necessity staying with Jackson, there being no other house available for him. The blow had fallen at last, and fallen just as Hawkshawe had almost completed his most brilliant departmental achievement. He guessed instinctively whose hands had struck it--the wretched half-caste Pozendine and his former enemy Iyer were leagued together in this. Perhaps they had no proofs, but that was, after all, a straw to clutch at. He knew he was guilty, and for the moment he was overcome. He sank back into a chair with an oath, and his hand slid of its own accord to the butt of his revolver; but Ma Mie was quick. "Not that way! not that way!" she cried as she clung to his wrist and wrenched the weapon away from his after all not unwilling hand. But a still more terrible trial awaited Hawkshawe, and that was the formal delivering over of his office to Phipson. He was treated with the greatest consideration, but this sympathetic treatment only added to the agony, though it was difficult to say who felt it most, honest young Phipson, with his soft heart, or the proud and guilty man whose place he had taken. When it was all over, Hawkshawe went back to his house and shut himself up, going nowhere--not even to his garden gate--doing nothing, but morosely sitting in his long cane chair smoking and drinking. "It is too cruel of them not to let the poor man go away," said Mrs. Smalley; and Habakkuk thought that if he were to go and see him Hawkshawe might be cheered up a bit. "There is no use, doctor," said Jackson. "I went myself, but could gain no admittance; perhaps it would be wiser to leave him alone. He will come out of this trial all right, I hope----" "If ever he lives through it," said Phipson, and they all understood, though no one spoke another word.