About ten o’clock he left the garden for the library, and, opening his bureau, wrote a long letter to his attorney at Lincoln’s Inn. Then he unlocked an old dower-chest that stood beside the fireplace, and lifted out the strong-box where he kept what money he required. Wilson, who was smoking at the window, watched him counting out the gold pieces and the notes upon the table. The lad was so serious and intent on it that the painter realized how grimly he was in earnest. “Three hundred guineas, Dick—three hundred guineas. Enough powder and shot to serve for the time being.” Wilson took his pipe-stem from between his teeth. “Plenty of hard cash, sir,” he said. “What are you going to do with it? Hire some sly fox of a lawyer?” Jeffray looked up with a frown. “No, not that, Dick. I am preparing for what I hold to be my duty.” “Well, sir, well?” “I am going to save this woman from the past, and act with honor for her, even though our love may come to nothing.” Wilson sat up and looked hard at Jeffray, profoundly interested in the problem-play before him. “You can trust me, sir; what do you mean to do?” “Make her a new life, Dick.” “Yes.” “Money is nothing to me. I can give her all of it she needs in this world, a home, and safety from all sordid care and dread.” “Well, what then?” Jeffray leaned back against the wall, and looked out gravely through the open window. “I have not found the end yet,” he said. Wilson nodded. “She has trusted me; God help me to deserve her trust.” As the morning wore on, Wilson noticed that an increasing restlessness was taking possession of the rebel. He grew moody, distraught, and silent, called for wine, and wandered hesitatingly about the room. The painter began to wonder whether Jeffray’s enthusiasm was abating, and whether he was tempted to regard the adventure in a more cold and calculating light. The affair reminded the painter of love as it was pictured in the old ballads. The beggar’s daughter of Bethnal Green could have had no more monstrously impossible romance than this peasant girl in a Sussex forest. Mr. Wilson’s surmises, however, were utterly at fault, though logic upheld them with an obvious display of probabilities. It was his ignorance of Lot Hardacre’s fate that was troubling Jeffray at the eleventh hour. No news had come from Rookhurst, and his cousin might have bled to death in the coach for all Jeffray knew to the contrary. Bess’s surrender, the bustle of preparation, had carried Richard above the wreckage of the past for the morning. The memory of Lot’s gray face and bloody body haunted him as the hours passed by. The restless stirrings of compunction were not to be refused a hearing. Jeffray met his fears with the answer of action. He would ride to Rookhurst, go to Stott’s house, and hear the truth from the surgeon’s own lips. “I cannot rest, Dick,” he said, “until I have heard the truth about poor Lot.” Wilson suggested that he might send a servant.