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 the shrubs.

Aram, regaining the side of Madeline, explained, in answer to her startled inquiries, that the man, whom he had known well some fourteen years ago, had again come to ask for his help, and he supposed that he would again have to aid him.

“And is that indeed all?” said Madeline, breathing more freely.  “Well, poor man, if he be your friend, he must be inoffensive.  Here, Eugene.”  And the simple-hearted girl put her purse into Aram’s hand.

“No, dearest,” said he, shrinking back.  “I can easily spare him enough.  But let us turn back.  It grows chill.”

“And why did he leave us, Eugene?”

“Because,” was the reply, “I desired him to visit me at home an hour hence.”

There was a past shared by these two men, and Houseman—­for that was the stranger’s name—­had come for the price of his silence.  The next day, on the plea of an old debt that suddenly had to be met, Aram approached his prospective father-in-law for the loan of L300.  This sum was readily placed at his disposal.  Indeed, he was offered double the amount.  His next action was to travel to London, where, with all the money at his command, he purchased an annuity for Houseman, falling back, for his own needs, upon the influence of Lord ——­ to secure for him a small state allowance which it was in that nobleman’s power to grant to him as a needy man of letters.

Houseman was surprised at the scholar’s generosity when the paper ensuring the annuity was placed in his hands.  “Before daybreak to-morrow,” he said, “I will be on the road.  You may now rest assured that you are free of me for life.  Go home—­marry—­enjoy your existence.  Within four days, if the wind set fair, I shall be in France.”