"No," thought Tom, as he rolled on into the fair expanse of down
country that lay for miles round Ecclesfield, "I haven't found one yet
quite up to the pattern I require. When I do I shall go in and
win, that's all. I don't see why my chance shouldn't be as good as
another's. I'm not such a bad-looking chap when I'm dressed and my
hair's greased. I can do tricks with cards like winking. I can ride a
bit, shoot a bit--'specially pigeons--dance a bit, and make love to
'em no end. I've got the gift of the gab, I know, and I stick at
nothing. That's what the girls like, and that's what will pull me
through when I find the one I want. Another station, and not there
yet! What a slow train this is!"

It was a slow train, and Tom, arriving at Ecclesfield, saw on the face
of the servant who admitted him that he was too late. In addition to
the solemn and mysterious hush that pervades a house in which the dead
lie yet unburied, a feeling of horror, the result of some unlooked-for
and additional calamity, seemed to predominate; and Tom was hardly
surprised, however much he might be shocked, when the old
butler gasped, in broken sentences, "Seizure--last night--quite
unconscious--all over this morning. Will you take some refreshment,
sir, after your journey?"

Mr. Bruce had been dead a few hours--dead without time to set his
house in order, without consciousness even to wish his child good-bye.

She came down to see Mr. Bargrave's clerk that afternoon, pale, calm,
collected, beautiful, but stern and unbending under the sorrow against
which her haughty nature rebelled. In a few words, referring to a
memorandum the while, she gave him her directions for the funeral and