_IV.--Hush-Money_


While Walter Lester and Corporal Bunting were passing northward, the
squire of Grassdale saw, with evident complacency, the passion growing
up between his friend and his daughter. He looked upon it as a tie that
would permanently reconcile Aram to the hearth of social and domestic
life; a tie that would constitute the happiness of his daughter and
secure to himself a relation in the man he felt most inclined of all he
knew to honour and esteem. Aram seemed another man; and happy indeed was
Madeline in the change. But one evening, while the two were walking
together, and Aram was discoursing on their future, Madeline uttered a
faint shriek, and clung trembling to her lover's arm.

Amazed and roused from his enthusiasm, Aram looked up, and, on seeing
the cause of her alarm, seemed himself transfixed, as by a sudden terror
to the earth.

But a few paces distant, standing amidst the long and rank fern that
grew on each side of their path, quite motionless, and looking on the
pair with a sarcastic smile, stood the ominous stranger whom we first
met at the sign of the Spotted Dog.

"Pardon me, dear Madeline," said Aram, softly disengaging himself from
her, "but for one moment."

He then advanced to the stranger, and after a conversation that lasted
but a minute, the latter bowed, and, turning away, soon vanished among