The Captain was evidently very much depressed, for he slowly shook his head and looked at the ground with a troubled face. Philip Chater rallyingly clapped him on the shoulder and began to talk of other things. “Come,” he said, “you must have lots of things to talk to me about—and any amount of news for me. There is one thing I should like to know very much; what has become of little Clara Siggs?” As if in answer to the question, the Captain raised his head and softly touched Philip on the arm. “See there she comes, Phil,” he said, “an’ under safe convoy!” Philip Chater, looking in the same direction, saw advancing towards them the girlish form of Clara leaning on the arm of Harry Routley. He sprang up to meet them and the girl advanced alone. For a moment there was silence between them; the Captain had drawn apart and was talking with Harry. Then Clara, looking up into Philip’s face, told the end of her story so far as it could concern him. “Mr. Chater—I was married this morning—and am the happiest girl on earth. When I tried to tell Harry that I had once in my wild wayward fashion cared for your brother—he would not let me speak; he kissed my lips to silence me. I thought that I should like you to know that I am very, very happy; that I am with people who are good to me, and whom I love and respect, and that whatever mad dream was once in my foolish heart is buried as deep as the brother you never knew in life.” His heart was too full in that hour of parting to say anything in reply; he held her hand for a moment and then turned towards Harry. “You thought badly of me once, Harry—and I’m afraid you’ve been blaming yourself ever since for any trouble you may have caused me. Don’t think of it any more; you, like every one else, were working in the dark. Now you understand and we part the best of friends—don’t we?” A little later Philip Chater set off towards Bamberton; something seemed to draw him to the place as it had never done before. He knew that the sale had taken place that day and that Chater Hall was lost to the Chaters forever; but he had a morbid desire to see it once again that he might carry away with him the remembrance of the home which had never been his, into whatever exile he might be going. It was almost dark when he traversed that long winding path which he had once watched as a fugitive through a whole day. But he came at last to the place and noticed, in the desolation of his heart, that the great hall door stood open and that all within seemed blank and empty. “I wonder who has bought it,” he muttered to himself, “and who will live here in the years to come.” There seemed to be no one about, and he walked in and turned into that room into which he had first gone on the occasion of his coming to Bamberton. And being in the room stopped dead with his heart beating suffocatingly; for there was a figure standing in one of the windows.