The New Rector

"Not much, sir," answered the valet, a twinkle of cunning in his eye. "The less said the sooner mended. But he understood, and he promised to give me ten shillings a week."

"To hold your tongue?"

"Well, so I took it, sir."

The curate drew a long breath. This was what he had expected. It was to information which might be drawn from this man that his second scheme had referred. And here was the man at his service, bound by a craven fear to do his bidding-bound to tell all he knew. "But why," Clode asked suspiciously, a thought striking him, "if what you say be true, are you here now-doing this, my man?"

"I was tempted, sir," the servant answered, his tone abject again. "I confess it truly, sir. I saw the money in the box here this morning, sir, and I thought that my ten shillings a week would not last long, and a little capital would set me up comfortably. And then the devil put it into my head that the young gentleman would not persecute me, even if he caught me."

"You did not think of me catching you?" said the curate grimly.

The man uttered a cry of anguish. "That I did not, sir," he sobbed. "Oh, Lord! I have never had a policeman's hand on me. I have been honest always."

"Until you took his lordship's money," replied the curate quietly. "But I understand. You have never been found out before, you mean."

No doubt when people of a certain class, for which respectability has long spelled livelihood, do fall into the law's clutch they suffer very sharply. Master Felton continued to pour forth heartrending prayers; but he might have saved his breath. The curate's thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking that a witness so valuable must be kept within reach at any cost and it did flash across his brain that the best course would be to hand him over now to the police, and trust to the effect which his statements respecting the rector should produce upon the inquiry. But the reflection that the allegations of a man on his trial for burglary would not obtain much credence led Clode to reject this simple course and adopt another. "Look here!" he said curtly. "I am going to deal mercifully with you, my man. But-but," he continued, frowning impatiently, as he saw the other about to speak-"on certain conditions. You are not to leave Claversham. That is the first. If you leave the town before I give you the word, I shall put the police on your track without an instant's delay. Do you hear that?"

"I will stop as long as you like, sir," said the servant submissively, but with wonder apparent both in his voice and face.

"Very well. I wish it for the present, no matter why. Perhaps because I would see that you lead an honest life for awhile."

"And-how shall I live, sir?" said the culprit timidly.

"For the present you may continue to draw your half-sovereign a week," the curate answered hastily, his face reddening, he best knew why. "Possibly I may tell Mr. Lindo at once. Possibly I may give you another chance, and tell him later, if I find you deserving. What is your address?"

"I am at the Bull and Staff," muttered Felton. It was a small public house of no very good repute.

"Well, stay there," Stephen Clode answered after a moment's thought. "But see you get into no harm. And since you are living on the rector's bounty, you may say so."

The man looked puzzled as well as relieved, but, stealing a doubtful glance at the curate's dark fate, he found his eyes still upon him, and cowered afresh. "Yes, take care," said Clode, smiling unpleasantly as he saw the effect his look produced. "Do not try to evade me or it will be the worse for you, Felton. And now go! But see you take nothing from here."

The detected one cast a sly glance at the half-rifled box which still lay on the carpet at his feet, a few gold coins scattered round it; then he looked up again. "It is all there, sir," he said, cringing. "I had but just begun."

"Then go!" said the curate, pointing with emphasis to the door. "Go, I tell you!"

The man's presence annoyed and humiliated him so that he felt a positive relief when the valet's back was turned. Left alone he stood listening, a cloud on his brow, until the faint sound of the outer door being pulled to reached his ear, and then, stooping hastily, he gathered up the sovereigns and half-sovereigns, which lay where they had fallen, and put them into the box. This done, he rose and laid the box itself upon the table by his side. And again he stood still, listening, a dark shade on his face.

Long ago, almost at the moment of his entrance, he had seen the pale shimmer of papers at the back of the little cupboard. Now, still listening stealthily, he thrust in his hand and drew out one of the bundles and opened it. The papers were parish accounts in his own handwriting! With a gesture of fierce impatience he thrust them back and drew out others, and, disappointed again in these, exchanged them hastily for a third set. In vain! The last were as worthless to him as the first.

He was turning away baffled and defeated, when he saw lying at the back of the lower compartment of the cupboard, whence the cash-box had come, two or three smaller packets, consisting apparently of letters. The curate reached hastily for one of these, and the discovery that it contained some of Lindo's private accounts, dated before his appointment, made his face flush and his fingers tremble with eagerness. He glanced nervously round the room and stopped to listen; then, moving the candle a little nearer, he ran his eye over the papers. But here, too, though the scent was hot, he took nothing, and he exchanged the packet for one of the others. Looking at this, he saw that it was indorsed in Lindo's handwriting, "Letters relating to the Claversham Living."

"At last," Clode muttered, his eyes burning, "I have it now." The string which bound the packet was knotted tightly, and his fingers seemed all thumbs as he labored to unfasten it. But he succeeded at last, and opening the uppermost letter (they were all folded across), saw that it was written from Lincoln's Inn Fields. "My dear sir," he read; and then-with a mighty crash sounding awfully in his ears-the door behind him was flung open just as he had flung it open himself an hour before, and, dropping the letter, he sprang round, to find the rector confronting him with a face of stupid astonishment.

CHAPTER IX

TOWN TALK

He was a man, as the reader will perhaps have gathered, of many shifts, and cool-headed; but for a moment he felt something of the anguish of discovery which had so tortured the surprised servant. The table shook beneath his hand, and it was with difficulty he repressed a wild impulse to overturn the candle, and escape in the darkness. He did repress it, however; nay, he forced his eyes to meet the rector's, and twisted his lips into the likeness of a smile. But when he thought of the scene afterward he found his chief comfort in the reflection that the light had been too faint to betray his full embarrassment.

Naturally the rector was the first to speak. "Clode!" he ejaculated softly, his surprise above words. "Is it you? Why, man," he continued, still standing with his hand on the door and his eyes devouring the scene, "what is up?"

The money-box stood open at the curate's side, and the letters lay about his feet where they had fallen. The little cupboard yawned among the books. No wonder Lindo's amazement, as he gradually took it all in, rather increased than diminished, or that the curate's tongue was dry and his throat husky when he at last found his voice. "It is all right. I will explain it," he stammered, almost upsetting the table in his agitation. "I expected you before," he added fussily, moving the light.

"The dickens you did!" slipped from the rector. It was difficult for him not to believe that his arrival had been the last thing expected.

"Yes," returned the curate, with a little snap of defiance. He was recovering himself, and could look the other in the face now. "But I am glad you did not come before, all the same."

"Why?"

"I will explain."

The light which the one candle gave was not so meagre that Clode's embarrassment had altogether escaped Lindo; and had the latter been a suspicious man he might have had queer thoughts, and possibly expressed them. As it was, he was only puzzled, and when the curate said he would explain, answered simply, "Do."

"The truth is," said Stephen Clode, beginning with an effort, "I have taken a good deal on myself, and I am afraid you will blame me, Mr. Lindo. If so, I cannot help it." His face flushed, and he beat a tattoo on the table with his fingers. "I came across," he continued, "to borrow a book a little before ten. The lights here were out; but, to my surprise, your house-door was open."

"As I found it myself!" the rector exclaimed.

"Precisely. Naturally I had misgivings, and I looked into the hall. I saw a streak of light proceeding from the doorway of this room, and I came in softly to see what it meant. I heard a man moving about in here, and I threw open the door much as you did."

"Did you?" said Lindo eagerly. "And who was it-the man, I mean?"

"That is just what I cannot tell you," replied the curate. His face was pale, but there was a smile upon it, and he met the other's gaze without flinching. He had settled his plan now.

"He got away, then?" said the rector, disappointed.

"No. He did not try either to escape or to resist," was the answer.

"But was he really a burglar?"

"Yes."

"Then where is he?" The rector looked round as if he expected to see the man lying bound on the floor. "What did you do with him?"

"I let him go."

Lindo whistled; and when he had done whistling still stood with his mouth open and a face of the most complete mystification. "You let him go?" he repeated mechanically, but not until after a pause of half a minute or so. "Why, may I ask?"

"You have every right to ask," the curate answered with firmness, and yet despondently. "I will tell you why-why I let him go, and why I cannot tell you his name. He is a parishioner of yours. It was his first offence, and I believe him to be sincerely penitent. I believe, too, that he will never repeat the attempt, and that the accident of my entrance saved him from a life of crime. I may have been wrong-I dare say I was wrong," continued the curate, growing excited-excitement came very easily to him at the moment-"but I cannot go back from my word. The man's misery moved me. I thought what I should have felt in his place, and I promised him, in return for his pledge that he would live honestly in the future, that he should go free, and that I would not betray his name to any one-to any one!"

"Well!" exclaimed the rector, his tone one of unbounded admiration in every sense of the word. "When you do a thing nobly, my dear fellow, you do do it nobly, and no mistake! I wonder who it was! But I must not ask you."

"No." said Clode. "And now," he continued, still beating the tattoo on the table, "you do not blame me greatly?"

"I do not, indeed. No. Only I think perhaps that you should have retained the right to tell me."

"I should have done so," said the curate regretfully.

"He has taken nothing, I suppose?" the rector continued, turning to the cupboard, and, not only satisfied with the explanation, but liking Clode better than he had liked him before.