believe, who having once loved her husband truly, could see him in pain or distress, or in danger of his life, without earnestly endeavouring to help him.  A woman may cease to love her husband; in some cases she is right in forgetting her love, but it would be hard to find a case where, were he the worst criminal alive, had he deceived her a thousand times, she would not at least help him to escape from his pursuers or give him a crust to save him from starvation.

Mary Goddard had done her best for the wretch who had claimed her assistance.  She had fed him, provided him with money, refused to betray him.  But if it were to be a question of giving him up to the law, or of allowing her best friend to be murdered by him, or even seriously injured, she felt that pity must be at an end.  It would be doubtless a very horrible thing to give him up, and she had gathered from what he had said that if he were taken he would pay the last penalty of the law.  It was so awful a thing that she groaned when she thought of it.  But she remembered his ghastly face in the starlight and the threat he had hissed out against the squire; he was a desperate man, with blood already on his hands.  It was more than likely that he would do the deed he had threatened to do.  What could be easier than to watch the squire on one of those evenings when he went up the park alone, to fall upon him and take his life?  Of late Mr. Juxon did not even take his dog with him.  The savage bloodhound would be a good protector; but even when he took Stamboul with him by day, he never brought him at night.  It was too long for the beast to wait, he used to say, from six to nine or half past; he was so savage that he did not care to leave him out of his sight; he brought mud into the cottage, or into the vicarage as the case might be—­if Stamboul had been an ordinary dog it would have been different.  Those Russian bloodhounds were not to be trifled with.  But the squire must be warned of his danger before another night came on.

It was a difficult question.  Mrs. Goddard at first thought of telling him herself; but she shrank from the thought, for she was exhausted and overwrought.  A few days ago she would have been brave enough to say anything if necessary, but now she had no longer the courage nor the strength.  It seemed so hard to face the squire with such a warning; it seemed as though she were doing something which would make her seem ungrateful in his eyes, though she hardly knew why it seemed so.  She turned more naturally to the vicar, to whom she had originally come in her first great distress; she had only once consulted him, but that one occasion seemed to establish a precedent in her mind, the precedent of a thing familiar.  It would certainly be easier.  After much thought and inward debate, she determined to send for Mr. Ambrose.