A feeble nod seemed to say yes. "Then you must have read the advertisement sent out by Lord Kippendale, offering a hundred pounds reward for information respecting 'Swan's Copper'; what has possessed you not to claim it? Does shoemaking pay you so very well that you can afford to turn up your nose at a hundred pounds? If so, I shall take to shoemaking to-morrow."

Samuel Foote gazed vacantly; he seemed to be keeping to the wall for the sake of its support. His face had become a sort of greenishgrey, which was probably his manner of turning pale.

"May the Heavens strike me dead," he began, "if"

"You may spare yourself the trouble of invoking Heaven any further," interrupted Maud, "for, after all, you might be taken at your word; and I don't want anybody to strike you dead until you have told me where you got these from,"-and, stepping up to him, she unclosed the hand with the copper fragments, and held them before his face.

"Let us not have anything more about the old mine-shaft," went on Maud, very quietly. "I will undertake to say that they did not come from there, though I will not undertake to say where they did come from. But, for the matter of that, we shall soon, with the help of an engineer-and perhaps a policeman-settle that point as well."

In the next instant, to her horror, the shoemaker let go his hold of the wall, and, without a warning of what was coming, collapsed straight on to his knees, Clutching the folds of her skirt, he tried to speak, but for the moment got no further than an indistinct gurgle and a ghastly grimace. Maud began to fear that she had baffled

"

her own object by frightening him into temporary imbecility. By the fashion in which he cowered she could see that the clue must be under her hand, and yet this moment was the one in which she felt herself most unable to conjecture the nature of that clue on which her fingers had all but closed A chaos of formless possibilities was beating about in her brain, but nothing of it all appeared upon her face, as she gazed down at the shoemaker's upturned and grimacing physiognomy. To reassure him, at least to the point of regaining his voice, appeared to be the first obvious necessity. As far as she had been able to judge, it had been the word "policeman that had sent him down on his knees, and for this reason she now hastened to assure him that there was no limb of the law at her heels just then, nor even waiting round the corner; and to hint that the appearance or non-appearance of any such individual on the scene depended entirely upon the truthfulness or untruthfulness with which Mr Foote should see fit to answer certain questions which she was about to put to him. "To begin with," she rapidly opened the interrogatory-"you have lived in this part of the country before?" It was more an assertion than a question, and made with a sort of stony decision, which not only crushed all resistance, but also most bravely masked the insecurity of her own position.

Samuel Foote, quite past resistance by this time, signified with his head that it was so.

"You lived here at the time of the late Lord Kippendale?"

Samuel Foote made no attempt to deny that this also was the

case.

"And you were at that time acquainted with a young woman

of the name of Molly Benson ?" pursued Maud.

"Yes," said the shoemaker, with an oath, "I was."

"And you also came in contact with a man of the name of Adam Armstrong, who afterwards became that young woman's husband?"

There was another oath, and another affirmative.

"And likewise with another man of the name of Christopher Swan?"

There was no answer this time. The shoemaker, still crouching on the floor, now sank back slowly on to his heels, and, with a return of the imbecile expression, stared up helplessly into Maud's face. "Answer!" said Maud, impatiently. "You cannot have known the others without knowing him; a one-eyed man who had to fly the country for robbery, and was then drowned at sea.' But as she was in the very act of saying it, a light broke in upon her. Suddenly, without preparation, the truth presented itself to her mind-not dimly or in pieces, but entire and unmistakably distinct, admitting of no doubt, and bear

ing with it the instantaneous conviction of an inspiration.

"I see it now," she cried, almost joyfully,-"I see it all; the diamond robber was not drowned, and you are Christopher Swan!"

The old man scrambled to his feet and staggered against the table; and at that moment, gazing into his distorted face, Maud remembered that there was probably not another human being within a circle of five miles around. What if this madman, driven to bay, should throw himself upon her? He had many and sharp instruments at hand.

But if Maud was frightened, it was only for a moment. Though her wrists were as slender as those of a child, her nerves were strong as those of a man. Under her steady gaze the little shoemaker was shaking like a leaf.

"I have not got them," he groaned,-"I have not got the diamonds: it was for her I took them - it was to her I gave them."

Then Maud's last doubt vanished, and she knew that she had found, not only "Swan's Copper," but Christopher Swan himself.

Christopher Swan, the son of a poor shoemaker at Floundershayle, owed his first acquaintance with the Gullyscoombe household to the late Lord Kippendale's pity for the poor misshapen object, whom Fate, as well as his fellow-men, seemed never tired of persecuting. From his unlovely infancy upwards, Christy's life had been a tissue of larger and smaller misfortunes, which lay unfailingly in wait for him whichever way he

might turn, and whatever occupation he might adopt. The enterprises of the miner Christy succeeded no better than those of the fisherman Christy, or of the labourer Christy. Down to the depths of the very lowest "level," and out to the full length of his very longest voyage, his bad luck would faithfully dog him. If a blast-hole exploded, it was sure to be in Christopher's face; if a fishing-mast toppled over, it was

certain to be on Christopher's head. One of these accidents had cost him his eye; the other, it was affirmed, had cost him the best part of his wits. Even those wits that remained to him were unevenly developed, being stunted in some directions and abnormally sharp in others. In the one matter of the discovery of minerals, Christopher had acquired for himself a reputation which Floundershayle and its neighbourhood loved to ascribe to the "dowsing rod," but which, in point of fact, rested on nothing but a certain natural aptitude for the pursuit, so marked as almost to amount to instinct, and developed by close and cunning observation. It may have been the love of these researches, or it may have been the drop of vagabond blood which he undoubtedly had in his veins, which would send Christy in his "out-of-work" days wandering by himself over the hills, or making mysterious experiments in the valleys. At Floundershayle it was an article of faith that Christy, though he was mightily secret about it, knew what was hidden under every yard of ground of the Gullyscoombe estate, just as plainly as other folks could see what was growing on it. As for the mines at work, he was a privileged intruder into every one of them, and there was not one of them that he did not know as intimately as his own coatpocket.

Lord Kippendale's charitable pity was not without a certain measure of reward. A convenient kind of general handiness was soon discovered about Christopher Swan, acquired by the mixture of his occupations, and fitting him most admirably to the post of a domestic Jack-of-all-trades. Whether it was to wash dishes, or

"

carry water, or brush clothes, Christy, with his crooked but nimble fingers, and his general propensity for being "sat upon by his fellow-servants, never came in amiss. Soon it became Lord Kippendale's established custom to send for Christopher Swan whenever he came down to "rough it" at Gullyscoombe. As he rose in favour his duties grew more varied, for now he was no longer only kitchen-scullion, but he was also partly valet and also partly postboy. The nearest post-office (Floundershayle) was three miles off by land, and not much more than half that distance by cutting across the bay in a boat; therefore it came in conveniently that Christy should be used to the manipulation of oars.

It

Strolling one evening by the sea, when his miscellaneous duties of the day were over, Christopher happened to become attracted by the print of a very small bare foot on the sand. He began to follow it, at first indolently, but gradually with a sort of fascination. wound in and out among the rocks, occasionally with a comparatively great interval,. followed by a deeper print, as though she of the small feet had cleared some clump of sea-weed with a bound. At last he found her: she was sitting on a stone, with her bare feet in a pool of water, bending forward and gazing at them, as though in admiration of their beauty. She might well gaze, thought Christopher Swan. He had never seen anything like those feet before; they looked like two precious objects put under glass for inspection. He almost felt as though he ought to have paid a penny for the sight. But when she looked up he thought it was a very lucky thing that her face was to be seen without paying for it,

for it seemed to him that all the pennies in the world would never be enough to pay for that vision. It was as delicate as the lining of a sea shell, and her hazel eyes danced like the sea itself. Christopher stood stupidly staring and stupidly wondering how it was that he had never seen her before. He had indeed heard about old Mat Benson's niece, who had come to live with him at Floundershayle because of her recent orphanhood, and he had likewise caught some rumour about her beauty, and of the wholesale desertion of sweethearts which her advent had caused amongst Floundershayle youths. But it had never occurred to him that she would be as beautiful as this; and, even at this moment, it struck him that this was more of a laughing sprite than of a mourning orphan. Small wonder, indeed, that serious Floundershayle should be so grievously dazzled. So was poor Christopher in ten minutes more. What they had talked of he never even pretended to remember, but there had been a laugh for every word and a glance for every laugh, and a good deal of splashing of the small feet in the water, and a very distracting rearrangement of the flaxen braids that had got loosened with the wind. "There's a girl at Floundershayle who ties her hair with a blue silk ribbon," she informed Christopher; "but it cost sixpence." And she sighed, and added very prettily that she wished she had a sixpence. That sigh somehow reminded Christopher that he had a spare sixpence at home. Before the end of the interview he had been coaxed into the promise of a yard of blue ribbon. A timely pedlar, one of the "Johnny Fortnights" of the country, provided the ribbon and carried off the contents of Chris

VOL. CXLVL-NO. DCCCLXXXVI.

topher's purse. Christopher did not mind the emptiness of his purse so long as he saw the blue ribbon in its place, mingled with the braids of Molly's silken hair. But scarcely a day passed and the blue ribbon had vanished, and a brilliant green ribbon was binding Molly's head-a ribbon which he knew, too, for he had seen it in Johnny Fortnight's box, only it was a superior article, with a scalloped edge, and quite above his means. Christopher looked gloomy when the blue ribbon disappeared, and, oddly enough, Adam, the Scotch groom, then a spruce personage of thirty, looked triumphant when the green one appeared. But the foolish, one-eyed youth was soon coaxed back into goodhumour, for the siren had fallen a-wishing again. Ah! and could he not guess what her wish was now? And the hazel eyes sank down to the delicate feet that first entranced him; and if it was really true that they entranced him, how could he wish that they should go on bruising themselves against the stones, and cutting themselves upon the shells: A pair of shoes? Yes, that was the latest wish of her heart Poor Christopher! His own heart was full, but for the moment his purse was empty. He had hopes, indeed, that it would not be empty. for long; he had a secret which he had been hugging to his heart for weeks past, and on which he confidently expected to build his future prosperity. It, was that same secret of which he subsequently boasted to Adam, in a conversation which,, in Adam's words, has already been described. But, as he affirmed to Molly, it was a secret which absolutely re quired time to ripen it; not very much time-only a few weeks in all probability. But a few weeks

more of shoeless existence did not at all fall in with Molly's desires ; and Christopher, in deep distress of mind, and egged on by the ingenuity of love, began to consider whether, though he could not buy the shoes, it were not possible to make them? He was a shoemaker's son, and though he had never learnt the trade, he had seen his father at work; and so, with borrowed tools, and with a piece of cloth begged from the overseer's wife, Christopher set to work in the dark hours of the night, and, after three days' hard labour, had turned out a pair of flat and shapeless articles, something of a cross-breed between a slipper and a bag. But the shoes, after a brief triumph, went way of the ribbon, and there came a day when Christopher met the bewitching Molly in a pair of shopmade red-morocco shoes, which evidently caused her great discomfort, but also boundless delight. At the same time the victorious smile reappeared on Adam's face. That smile and the morocco shoes taken together were too much even for Christopher. There was a scene, and this time Molly had some little trouble in bringing her slave back to her feet, but it was nevertheless done.

Soon after the reconciliation Christopher saw his master receive packet of a peculiar shape, and that same evening, while acting as valet, he had a glimpse of a glittering necklace, the wedding-present which the Earl had ordered for his betrothed. Christopher had never seen diamonds before, and he dreamed of them that night.

Next day, as an evil chance would have it, he met Molly, and with the recollection of those glittering stones in his head he spoke of them to her. It was the

fatal mistake of his life. "I didn't know till now that there was anything in the world that shone so," he said. "It was fire, I thought; and then I thought it was water. I don't know what other way to put it; they seemed to burn and they seemed to melt. Just fire and water-that's what they are." Fool! he might have taken warning by the way her eyes were glittering, as she listened to his description. Idiot! to talk of diamonds that were not his; before a woman who had the brains of a kitten, the giddiness of a butterfly, the heart of a pebble, and the vanity of a peacock!

Molly grew very thoughtful, and another wish was the result. This time really such a little thing and such an easy thing, quite simple and quite safe, only to bring her the necklace in secret,-for ten minutes, she hastened to explain, only just to look at it, touch it, perhaps (oh, supreme bliss!) just once to clasp it round her neck. She had a moral conviction that to have felt those diamonds on her neck for once would shed an undying lustre over the rest of her existence. And the moment was so favourable. The Earl was going to Scotland for a few days; the necklace would be in the safe, the key with the overseer, and Christopher had a thousand opportunities for purloining that key-only for ten minutes !

Christopher hesitated, but in the midst of his hesitation came the reflection that this time, at least, Adam would not be able to outdo him. He knew his rival's honesty to be incorruptible, and he was convinced that Adam's fidelity to the family would never permit him to tamper, however innocently, with a family safe, even for the sake of Molly's smiles; and for the matter of that, Molly knew