"Still he will be a servant, my lady, and that's not the position-- although, begging your pardon, an emperor might be proud to be your servant; yet that's not the position for little Joey." "Prove that you will do better for him, McShane, and he is yours: but without you do, I am too partial to him to like to part with him. His conduct on the journey--" "Yes, exactly, his conduct on the journey, when the wolves would have shared us out between them, is one great reason for my objection. He is too good for a menial, and that's the fact. You ask me what I intend to do with him; it is not so easy to answer that question, because you see, my lady, there's a certain Mrs McShane in the way, who must be consulted; but I think that when I tell her, what I consider to be as near the truth as most things which are said in this world, that if it had not been for the courage and activity of little Joey, a certain Major McShane would have been by this time eaten and digested by a pack of wolves, why, I then think, as Mrs McShane and I have no child, nor prospect of any, as I know of, that she may be well inclined to come into my way of thinking, and of adopting him as her own son; but, of course, this cannot be said without my consulting with Mrs McShane, seeing as how the money is her own, and she has a right to do as she pleases with it." "That, indeed, alters the case," replied O'Donahue, "and I must not stand in the way of the boy's interest; still I should like to do something for him." "You have done something for him, O'Donahue; you have prevented his starving; and if he has been of any use to you, it is but your reward-- so you and he are quits. Well, then, it is agreed that I take him with me?" "Yes," replied O'Donahue. "I cannot refuse my consent after what you have said." Two days after this conversation the parties separated: O'Donahue, with his wife, accompanied by Dimitri, set off on their return to Saint Petersburg; while McShane, who had provided himself with a proper passport, got into the diligence, accompanied by little Joey, on his way back to England. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. THE DAY AFTER THE MURDER. We must now return to the village of Grassford, and the cottage in which we left Rushbrook and his wife, who had been raised up from the floor, by her husband, and, having now recovered from her swoon, was crying bitterly for the loss of her son, and the dread of her husband's crime being discovered. For some time Rushbrook remained in silence, looking at the embers in the grate: Mum sometimes would look piteously in his master's face, at other times he would slowly approach the weeping woman. The intelligence of the animal told him that something was wrong. Finding himself unnoticed, he would then go to the door by which Joey had quitted, snuff at the crevice, and return to his master's side. "I'm glad that he's off," at last muttered Rushbrook; "he's a fine boy, that."