The old lady's moans and sighs were her answers. "And now that I think on it, he must have died a Christian," said Mr. Dingwell, briskly. The old lady looked up, and listened breathlessly. "Because, after we thought he was speechless, there was one of those what-d'ye-call-'ems--begging dervish fellows--came into the room, and kept saying one of their long yarns about the prophet Mahomet, and my dying friend made me a sign; so I put my ear to his lips, and he said distinctly, 'He be d--d!'--I beg your pardon; but last words are always precious." Here came a pause. Mr. Dingwell was quite bewildering this trembling old lady. "And the day before," resumed Mr. Dingwell, "Poor Arthur said, 'They'll bury me here under a turban; but I should like a mural tablet in old Penruthyn church. They'd be ashamed of my name, I think; so they can put on it the date of my decease, and the simple inscription, Check-mate.' But whether he meant to himself or his creditors I'm not able to say." Mrs. Mervyn groaned. "It's very interesting. And he had a message for you, ma'am. He called you by a name of endearment. He made me stoop, lest I should miss a word, and he said, 'Tell my little linnet,' said he"-- But here Mr. Dingwell was interrupted. A wild cry, a wild laugh, and--"Oh, Arthur, it's _you_!" He felt, as he would have said, "oddly" for a moment--a sudden flood of remembrance, of youth. The worn form of that old outcast, who had not felt the touch of human kindness for nearly thirty years, was clasped in the strain of an inextinguishable and angelic love--in the thin arms of one likewise faded and old, and near the long sleep in which the heart is fluttered and pained no more. There was a pause, a faint laugh, a kind of sigh, and he said-- "So you've found me out." "Darling, darling! you're not changed?" "Change!" he answered, in a low tone. "There's a change, little linnet, from summer to winter; where the flowers were the snow is. Draw the curtain, and let us look on one another." CHAPTER XIX. THE GREEK MERCHANT SEES LORD VERNEY. OUR friend, Wynne Williams, made a much longer stay than he had expected in London. From him, too, Tom Sedley received about this time a mysterious summons to town, so urgent and so solemn that he felt there was something extraordinary in it; and on consultation with the Etherage girls, those competent advisers settled that he should at once obey it. Tom wrote to Agnes on the evening of his arrival-- "I have been for an hour with Wynne Williams; you have no notion what a good fellow he is, and what a wonderfully clever fellow. There is something _very_ good in prospect for me, but not yet certain, and I am bound not to tell a human being. But _you_, I will, of course, the moment I know it for certain. It may turn out nothing at all; but we are working very hard all the same." In the meantime, down at Malory, things were taking a course of which the good people of Cardyllian had not a suspicion.