sane yet. He is unwilling to return to England, though Hester suffers from her long trouble. She is home-sick; you can see it plainly; and she is longing to come back."

"I must go to them," interrupted Carl, taking a stride towards the door, as if he would set off the same instant.

You

"I knew you would," said Robert, in an accent of relief and regret. Yes; go. will prevail with him, and take care of her. But stay; I must give you fuller directions as to how you are to find them; and you cannot leave here before the first train in the morning. What a happy fellow you are!"

He uttered the last words with a smile, sadder than many tears are. Carl was arrested and quieted by it. He descended from the height of his own unexpected joy to enter into the desolation and loneliness of Robert Waldron. They talked together until long after the sun had gone down; and then parted with a friendship begun between them which would last their life-time.

VOL. III.

N

CHAPTER XVII.

TO BURGUNDY.

WITH Robert's very minute directions, and with the certainty of finding Hester at the end of his journey, Carl felt no sort of hesitation or embarrassment at the idea of passing through a country, the language of which was altogether unfamiliar to him. He knew two or three dead languages, but he had no practical knowledge of French, and could not comprehend a word addressed to him by any of his fellow-passengers, or the railway officials; but as far as Paris his ignorance did not prove inconvenient. He crossed the Channel and sped up to Paris as swiftly as steamers and railways could take him; but it appeared the slowest mode of transit it had ever been his lot to experience. An interpreter accompanied the train, and expedited his passage through Paris to the Lyons Railway Station, from which was the line running through Burgundy. He knew how long it would be before he could reach the small station, which Robert had

described to him, and where he would find a diligence plainly inscribed with the word Ecquemonville." He would have nothing to do but seat himself in it, put six francs into the hand of the driver; and there would be no longer any difficulty to surmount in fulfilling his mission. After that Hester would be his interpreter. But if there had been a thousand difficulties, multiplied by a thousand dangers, he was ready to confront them all to find her at the end of them.

The country through which he was passing received but small attention from him; though now and then he started, as if aroused from a slight slumber, to give a brief glance at the long valleys, and broad table-lands he was traversing. He promised himself to survey them more carefully on his return, when Hester and her father were with him. One question agitated him very greatly. Was it true that John Morley was innocent of any attempt to avenge himself either upon Rose or Robert Waldron? So far as his liability to earthly judgment and punishment was concerned, he ran no risk of being called upon to expiate his crime. Circumstances had

singularly favoured the criminal.

But Carl longed to believe that the hand of Hester's father was free from every stain. His mind was tossed from one thought to another in a tumult of hope and apprehension, until he found that the train began to slacken speed at the time when they should be approaching the station where he was to alight.

The train had been shunted into a siding to wait until another, bound for Paris, had started from the little station. It was passing them slowly, and his glance, now on the alert, fell upon the last compartment of a second-class carriage, as it glided by. There sat-he could not by any chance be mistaken-John Morley, but erect, vigorous, and sun-burnt, with an unwonted energy in his face, and beside him was Hester, whose full face he could not see as it was turned towards her father, but whose delicate profile was too familiar to him ever to be forgotten. An instant only did this vision of her last, for the train was getting up its speed, and almost as he saw her she was lost to his sight again.

Carl's first impulse was to thrust himself half-out of the window, and to shout after the

receding train; but he restrained himself, and waited until his carriage-door was unlocked. Without doubt this was the station he had booked for; the ticket was taken from him, and he alighted mechanically. He stood motionless, gazing down the long straight line of railway, narrowing to a vanishing point at a great distance off, along which he could yet see the film of smoke fading away into the blue air. A few other travellers had descended from the train, but they did not disperse hastily as in England. They lingered instead, staring hard at this handsome young foreigner, who stood immovable in an attitude of dismay. When Carl awoke to his ludicrous position, he found himself surrounded by a group of country-people, whose eyes and mouths were wide open, and seemed little likely to close again.

He lifted his hat from his beating temples, to let the cool air play about them; and the Frenchmen, not to be out-done in politeness, removed theirs, standing round him bareheaded in the glowing sunshine. Carl was half-beside himself with disappointment and embarrassment.