Three weeks later there came a second letter from Isabel, bearing the London postmark, and, a month after that, a third which had been stamped at Southampton. Both these letters Miss Pengarvon burned without opening. After that no further letter came, and it seemed as if Isabel were indeed lost to them for ever. Three years went by, and then came that snowy December night which brought Isabel back, a suppliant, to the door of Broome. It has already been told how Miss Pengarvon refused her admittance, how Barney Dale and his wife found her dying, or dead in the snow; and how a reluctant consent was given to her inanimate body being brought indoors by way of the back entrance. From that hour every trace of her vanished. Morning broke, the housemaid came down stairs and went about her duties, suspecting nothing. Neither inside the house nor out was any sign or token to be seen of her, who living or dead, had been carried in but a few hours before. Where was she? What had become of her? Those were questions which four people alone out of all the world could have answered, had they chosen to speak. THE STORY. CHAPTER I. MR. HAZELDINE CHANGES HIS NOTES FOR GOLD. Twenty years, with all their manifold changes, have come and gone since Isabel Pengarvon was found one December night lying in the snow in front of the great door at Broome; and the course of our narrative now takes us to Ashdown, a thriving town in the Midlands, of some twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants. Everybody in Ashdown knew Avison's Bank, and could have directed a stranger to it. It had been established for nearly three-quarters of a century, and no bank stood higher in the estimation of the manufacturers and tradespeople of the town or of the farmers round about. Mr. Avison, senior, owing to his great age and infirmities, had retired from any active direction of the business some years ago. Mr. Avison, junior, who was himself a middle-aged man, had been abroad, with the exception of a week or two now and then, for the last year or more, in search of the health which his native country denied him. Now, however, he was coming back--was, in fact, expected almost immediately, and was once more going to try a winter at home.