His love for his young mistress was too profound for him to hesitate because there was danger ahead. All the more reason that he should go straight on to his service of humble love and duty. He reached Beddington station at a few minutes past eleven o'clock, and he walked slowly thence to Parksides, congratulating himself that the night was dark, and that he was therefore not likely to be recognized. By midnight he was on the outskirts of the grounds. He was familiar with every inch of them, and he was soon immediately outside the old house, looking up at the windows. All was dark and silent; there came from within not a sound of life. There was no light in his young mistress's room, but the white blinds drawn down were an indication that it was inhabited. He resolved to wait an hour or two, and then, if all still remained silent, if no sign came to him, to make a cautious attempt to arouse Phoebe by throwing a little light gravel against the window-panes. He knew, also, in which room Miser Farebrother slept, and saw that all was dark therein. Up to this point he was safe. He had been watching and waiting for nearly an hour when he was startled by a circumstance which could not but be unusual at such an hour of the night in that locality. For a horseman to gallop along the public road would have been reasonable enough, but for the rider to pull up immediately outside the grounds, to alight, to tie his horse to a hedge, to creep stealthily into the grounds, to peer around him in the dark for several minutes, not daring to move another step until he was convinced that he was alone and that his movements were not observed; then to creep on and on into the interior of the grounds, away from the house, to pause again and take from an inner pocket a dark lantern, and to commence to search the earth for some mark of which he was in quest--all this was unusual and suspicious; but it was exactly what occurred, and the man peering and searching, falling on his knees now and then, and seeming to tear at the earth, was none other than Jeremiah Pamflett! When the sounds of the horse's feet had ceased outside the grounds, Tom Barley had crept in that direction, and had seen what has been described. He recognized Jeremiah, but had not the slightest idea of the object which had brought the schemer to Parksides at such a strange hour. But it was not the first time that Jeremiah had been thus engaged. He was convinced that in some part of the grounds there was a spot in which Miser Farebrother had been in the habit of secreting large hoards of money. During the last three or four months the miser had drawn out of the bank at various times sums amounting in the aggregate to not less than £7,000. Information which Jeremiah had received from his mother had forced upon him this conviction of a secret hiding-place. Even in the daylight, when he was strong enough to walk in the open air by the aid of his crutch stick, the miser was sometimes seen by Mrs. Pamflett