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THE BLOOD-HOUND.
I need not follow the steps by which the inquiry-office became able
so far to enlighten the mother of Emmeline concerning the person and
habits of the visitor to the deserted shaft, that she had now come
to Glaston in pursuit of yet farther discovery concerning him. She
had no plan in her mind, and as yet merely intended going to church
and everywhere else where people congregated, in the hope of
something turning up to direct inquiry. Not a suspicion of Leopold
had ever crossed her. She did not even know that he had a sister in
Glaston, for Emmeline's friends had not all been intimate with her
parents.
On the morning after her arrival, she went out early to take a walk,
and brood over her cherished vengeance; and finding her way into the
park, wandered about in it for some time. Leaving it at length by
another gate, and inquiring the way to Glaston, she was directed to
a footpath which would lead her thither across the fields. Following
this, she came to a stile, and being rather weary with her long
walk, sat down on it.
The day was a grand autumnal one. But nature had no charms for her.
Indeed had she not been close shut in the gloomy chamber of her own
thoughts, she would not thus have walked abroad alone; for nature
was to her a dull, featureless void; while her past was scarcely of
the sort to invite retrospection, and her future was clouded.
It so fell that just then Leopold was asleep in his chair,--every
morning he slept a little soon after being carried out,--and that
chair was in its usual place in the meadow, with the clump of trees
between it and the stile. Wingfold was seated in the shade of the
trees, but Helen, happening to want something for her work, went to
him and committed her brother to his care until she should return,
whereupon he took her place. Almost the same moment however, he
spied Polwarth coming from the little door in the fence, and went to
meet him. When he turned, he saw, to his surprise, a lady standing
beside the sleeping youth, and gazing at him with a strange
intentness. Polwarth had seen her come from the clump of trees, and
supposed her a friend. The curate walked hastily back, fearing he
might wake and be startled at sight of the stranger. So intent was
the gazing lady that he was within a few yards of her before she
heard him. She started, gave one glance at the curate, and hurried
away towards the town. There was an agitation in her movements which
Wingfold did not like; a suspicion crossed his mind, and he resolved
to follow her. In his turn he made over his charge to Polwarth, and
set off after the lady.
The moment the eyes of Emmeline's mother fell upon the countenance
of Leopold, whom, notwithstanding the change that suffering had
caused, she recognized at once, partly by the peculiarity of his
complexion, the suspicion, almost conviction, awoke in her that here
was the murderer of her daughter. That he looked so ill seemed only
to confirm the likelihood. Her first idea was to wake him and see
the effect of her sudden presence. Finding he was attended, however,
she hurried away to inquire in the town and discover all she could
about him.
A few moments after Polwarth had taken charge of him, and while he
stood looking on him tenderly, the youth woke with a start.
"Where is Helen?" he said.
"I have not seen her. Ah, here she comes!"
"Did you find me alone then?"
"Mr. Wingfold was with you. He gave you up to me, because he had to
go into the town."
He looked inquiringly at his sister as she came up, and she looked
in the same way at Polwarth.
"I feel as if I had been lying all alone in this wide field," said
Leopold, "and as if Emmeline had been by me, though I didn't see
her."
Polwarth looked after the two retiring forms, which were now almost
at the end of the meadow, and about to issue on the high road.
Helen followed his look with hers. A sense of danger seized her. She
trembled, and kept behind Leopold's chair.
"Have you been coughing much to-day?" asked the gate-keeper.
"Yes, a good deal--before I came out. But it does not seem to do
much good."
"What good would you have it do?"
"I mean, it doesn't do much to get it over. Oh, Mr. Polwarth, I am
so tired!"
"Poor fellow! I suppose it looks to you as if it would never be
over. But all the millions of the dead have got through it before
you. I don't know that that makes much difference to the one who is
going through it. And yet it is a sort of company. Only, the Lord of
Life is with you, and that is real company, even in dying, when no
one else can be with you."
"If I could only feel he was with me!"
"You may feel his presence without knowing what it is."
"I hope it isn't wrong to wish it over, Mr. Polwarth?"
"I don't think it is wrong to wish anything you can talk to him
about and submit to his will. St. Paul says, 'In everything let your
requests be made known unto God.'"
"I sometimes feel as if I would not ask him for anything, but just
let him give me what he likes."
"We must not want to be better than is required of us, for that is
at once to grow worse."
"I don't quite understand you."
"Not to ask may seem to you a more submissive way, but I don't think
it is so childlike. It seems to me far better to say, 'O Lord, I
should like this or that, but I would rather not have it if thou
dost not like it also.' Such prayer brings us into conscious and
immediate relations with God. Remember, our thoughts are then,
passing to him, sent by our will into his mind. Our Lord taught us
to pray always and not get tired of it. God, however poor creatures
we may be, would have us talk to him, for then he can speak to us
better than when we turn no face to him."
"I wonder what I shall do the first thing when I find myself
out--out, I mean, in the air, you know."
"It does seem strange we should know so little of what is in some
sense so near us! that such a thin veil should be so impenetrable! I
fancy the first thing I should do would be to pray."
"Then you think we shall pray there--wherever it is?"
"It seems to me as if I should go up in prayer the moment I got out
of this dungeon of a body. I am wrong to call it a dungeon, for it
lies open to God's fair world, and the loveliness of the earth comes
into me through eyes and ears just as well as into you. Still it is
a pleasant thought that it will drop off me some day. But for
prayer--I think all will pray there more than here--in their hearts
and souls I mean."
"Then where would be the harm if you were to pray for me after I am
gone?"
"Nowhere that I know. It were indeed a strange thing if I might pray
for you up to the moment when you ceased to breathe, and therewith
an iron gate close between us, and I could not even reach you
through the ear of the Father of us both! It is a faithless
doctrine, for it supposes either that those parted from us can do
without prayer, the thing Jesus himself could not do without, seeing
it was his highest joy, or that God has so parted those who are in
him from these who are in him, that there is no longer any relation,
even with God, common to them. The thing to me takes the form of an
absurdity."
"Ah, then, pray for me when I am dying, and don't be careful to stop
when you think I am gone, Mr. Polwarth."
"I will remember," said the little man.
And now Helen had recovered herself, and came and took her usual
seat by her brother's side. She cast an anxious glance now and then
into Polwarth's face, but dared not ask him anything.
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