And then Mr. Hawkins, with something additional to the stipulated reward in his pocket, and a pint bottle of his favourite stimulant to refresh him on the way, took himself off, and Carrington saw no more of him. The people about the inn saw very little of Carrington, but it was with some surprise that the ostler received his directions to saddle the horse which stood in the stable, just when the last gleam of the short winter's daylight was dying out on Christmas-day. Carrington had not stirred beyond the precincts of the inn all the morning and afternoon. The strange visitor was all uninfluenced either by the devotional or the festive aspects of the season. He was quite alone, and as he sat in his cheerless little bedroom at the small country inn, and brooded, now over a pocket volume, thickly noted in his small, neat handwriting, now over the plans which were so near their accomplishment, he exulted in that solitude--he gave loose to the cynicism which was the chief characteristic of his mind. He cursed the folly of the idiots for whom Christmas-time had any special meaning, and secretly worshipped his own idols--money and power. The horse was brought to him, and Carrington mounted him without any difficulty, and rode away in the gathering gloom. "Wild Buffalo" gave him no trouble, and he began to feel some misgivings as to the truth of the exceedingly bad character he had received with the animal. Supposing he should not be the unmanageable devil he was represented,--supposing all his schemes came to grief, what then? Why, then, there were other ways of getting rid of Lionel Dale, and he should only be the poorer by the purchase of a horse. On the other hand, "Wild Buffalo," plodding along a heavy country road, almost in the dark, and after the probably not too honestly dispensed feeding of a village inn, which Carrington had not personally superintended, was no doubt a very different animal to what he might be expected to prove himself in the hunting-field. Pondering upon these probabilities, Victor Carrington rode slowly on towards Hallgrove. He had taken accurate observations; he had nicely calculated time and place. All the servants, tenants, and villagers were gathered together under Lionel Dale's hospitable roof. To the feasting had succeeded games and story-telling, and the absorbing gossip of such a reunion. That which Victor Carrington had come to do, he did successfully; and when he returned to his inn, and gave over his horse to the care of the ostler, no one but he, not even the man who was there listening to every word spoken among the servants at the rectory, and eagerly scanning every face there, knew that "Niagara" was in the inn-stable, and "Wild Buffalo" in the stall at Hallgrove. * * * * * CHAPTER XXII. ARCH-TRAITOR WITHIN, ARCH-PLOTTER WITHOUT.