“Farewell, then, Oswald,” she murmured. “It has taken the sting from my heart to know that you did not leave me from choice.” And he, striving to speak, broke down, and it was she who had to show her strength by gently leaving him and finding her own way to the door. But no sooner had the night blast blowing in from the graveyard struck him, than he stumbled in haste to the threshold, and drawing her with a frenzied grasp from the path she was blindly taking toward the graves, led her from that path to the high road, where Clarke was waiting in some anxiety for the end of this lengthy interview. As the doctor gave her up and saw her taken in charge by her son, he said with a thrilling emphasis not soon to be forgotten by either of the two who listened to them: “Try every means, and be sure you bid Polly to try every means, to rid yourselves of the bondage of this interloper. If all fails, come to me. But do not come till every other hope is dead.” PART IV. A PICKAXE AND A SPADE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XV. THE SMALL, SLIGHT MAN. TWO months had passed and the first snow was whitening the streets of Hamilton. It was falling thick on Carberry hill, up which Clarke Unwin was plodding early one evening on a visit to the Earle cottage. His errand was one of importance. A crisis was approaching in his affairs and he was determined to settle, once and for all, whether poor Polly’s money was to be sacrificed to her father’s increasing demands, or whether she could safely be allowed to follow her own wishes and give five thousand dollars of it to the lover whose future fortunes seemed to depend upon his possession of this amount. Ephraim Earle had told her with something like a curse that he should expect from her this very sum on the first of the month, but if this demand were satisfied then Clarke’s own hopes must go, for his friends in the Cleveland works were fast becoming impatient, and Mr. Wright had written only two days before that if the amount demanded from him was not forthcoming in a fortnight, they would be obliged to listen to the overtures of a certain capitalist who was only waiting for Clarke’s withdrawal to place his own nephew in the desired place. Clarke Unwin had not visited the Earle cottage since Ephraim took up his abode in it. Polly had refused to go there, and he himself felt no call to intrude upon a man who was personally disagreeable to him, and whom he could not but regard as a tyrant to the sweet girl whose life had been all sunshine till this man came into it with his preposterous demands and insatiable desire for money.