was passing round her, took the letter, and was about to open it. A cry escaped herthe handwriting was his, whom at that moment she knew to be lying dead in the Wardrobe Room at Rotherhame Castle.

CHAPTER XVII.

The holly by the cottage-eaves,
To-night ungathered shall it stand.
We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas Eve.

TENNYSON.

Think then, my soul, that Death is but a groom
That brings a light into an outer room,
And after bears it nearer to thy sight,

For such advances doth Heaven make in Death."

G. HERBERT.

"HALLO, Bobby! There you are at last! Pleasant journey, my boy?"

Dr. Bogle was standing in the St. Dunstan's Station, and had just discovered, by the lamp light, his son and heir, who, clad in an ulster down to the heels, was alighting with a yawn upon the platform.

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"Not likely to be particularly pleasant on Christmas Eve," he grunted. They've kept us sticking about at every blessed station till I felt half mad. I kicked up a row at Malton, and told the guard I should complain to the Company. Not a hot-water tin to be got, and a lot of grubby babies in my carriage yelling like so many mad cats." "You're an hour after time, but better late than never. And so you've taken your degree at last, and now good-bye to old Oxford."

"Yes, and I'm just about glad, too. It

was awful slow last term at Queen's. Just get out of my way, will you, and let me see after my luggage.

The Doctor obediently complied, and by dint of superior vigour in shoving and elbowing, Robert soon contrived to force his way through the thick crowd of holiday-makers that gathered round the luggage-van.

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Just like those nincompoops!" he observed, as he re-emerged, portmanteau in hand, "they've been and left my hat-box behind. It's their own fault entirely, for I saw it labelled. They're going to telegraph at once to Didcot where we changed, so you and I will just wait here and hear the answer.'

"Gross carelessness!" ejaculated the Doctor, shivering. He was tired of standing about in the cold draughty station; but on this happy occasion the will of the household. Moloch was supreme, and he must go on stamping his feet and rubbing his hands, till such time as Bob's anxieties respecting the missing article were laid at rest.

"Deer from the Castle! Who sends that now?" asked Bob, as his eyes fell upon a pair of antlers, lying with a heap of slaughtered pheasants at a little distance, out of the way of the crowd.

"Bradshaw, to be sure. You know he's been down with us the last two days." Berkeley still alive?"

Robert nodded. 66

he inquired.

VOL. III.

"Still alive, poor fellow, and may hold on.

T

for days yet, by what the doctor says. Mrs. Bradshaw is a bit put out, for she meant to have brought the little girl there to keep Christmas in style, but what's to be done? It wouldn't do to have grand goings-on with him dying in the house, and life and death are in other hands than ours. Here's the train from London, I declare. It should have been in two hours ago."

Drawing back a few paces out of the way of the fresh influx of passengers, Robert resumed the discussion.

"Car tells me the heiress is awfully fond of the ice," he said. "I hope the girls have been keeping up their skating."

"I sent them to practise this morning, thinking it likely that you would wish to have them as your companions now that you were coming home. The ice on the fish-ponds bore well to-day."

"Stunning!" said Robert, with a click of the tongue. "We must make up parties there with Car and the heiress, and keep out the snobs. A lot of them came up out of the town last winter, and were let in just for sending up their rotten cards."

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Depend on it Mrs. Bradshaw will be select enough," said the Doctor; "and the little lady will be very dependent on us, her connections, for amusement. It will seem odd, won't it, to have a Lady Rotherhame again up at the Castle? To think, too, that the late poor dear woman never had any right

to the name after all! Dolly is given the title merely out of courtesy at present, you know. It will be a long business with the House of Lords before her claim is legally settled."

"It will be no end of an arrangement for us, observed Robert. "The Castle will be a second home for us all. An antiquated parson like old Bradshaw will never be able to look after the shooting for himself. I shall tell him that he had better leave all that sort of thing to me."

"He went over the house systematically yesterday," said the Doctor, "and finally settled about the rooms. Dolly, Anna, and the governess are to be all together in the Keep. He was quite delighted with poor Lady Rotherhame's boudoir-Lady Harold's I should say the one that was shut up when she died, you know; and he means to have it repainted, and nicely fitted up for Mrs. Bradshaw."

"May I trouble you to let me pass?" said a voice, which, though low, startled Dr. Bogle more than the blare of a trumpet. He drew back with involuntary deference, and the newcomer, lifting his hat in acknowledgment, passed on silently. Bobby was, to use his own expression, "all there" in a moment.

The force of long habit did not make him forget that the some-time Earl was but a detected swindler after all, and the only notice with which he favoured his godfather was a