"Steady, boy, steady! quiet, old fellow!" Joseph said, in a whisper. Three or four saddles and bridles hung upon a rack in one corner of the small stable. Joseph Wilmot selected the things he wanted, and began to saddle the horse, supporting himself on his cane as he did so. The groom slept in the house now, by his master's orders, and there was no one within hearing. The horse was saddled and bridled in five minutes, and Joseph Wilmot led him out of the stable, followed by Margaret, who still carried the lamp. There was a low iron gate leading out of the quadrangle into the grounds. Joseph led the horse to this gate. "Go back and get me my coat," he said to Margaret; "you'll go faster than I can. You'll find a coat lined with fur on a chair in the bedroom." His daughter obeyed, silently and quietly, as she had done before. The rooms all opened one into the other. She saw the bedroom with the tall, gloomy bedstead, the light of the fire flickering here and there. She set the lamp down upon a table in this room, and found the fur-lined coat her father had sent her to fetch. There was a purse lying on a dressing-table, with sovereigns glittering through the silken network, and the girl snatched it up as she hurried away, thinking, in her innocent simplicity, that her father might have nothing but those few sovereigns to help him in his flight. She went back to him, carrying the bulky overcoat, and helped him to put it on in place of the dressing-grown he had been wearing. He had taken his hat before going to the stable. "Here is your purse, father," she said, thrusting it into his hand; "there is something in it, but I'm afraid there's not very much. How will you manage for money where you are going?" "Oh, I shall manage very well." He had got into the saddle by this time, not without considerable difficulty; but though the fresh air made him feel faint and dizzy, he felt himself a new man now that the horse was under him—the brave horse, the creature that loved him, whose powerful stride could carry him almost to the other end of the world; as it seemed to Joseph Wilmot in the first triumph of being astride the animal once more. He put his hand involuntarily to the belt that was strapped round him, as Margaret asked that question about the money. "Oh, yes," he said, "I've money enough—I am all right." "But where are you going?" she asked, eagerly. The horse was tearing up the wet gravel, and making furious champing noises in his impatience of all this delay. "I don't know," Joseph Wilmot answered; "that will depend upon—I don't know. Good night, Margaret. God bless you! I don't suppose He listens to the prayers of such as me. If He did, it might have been all different long ago—when I tried to be honest!"