a prisoner till I release you. That is how Miss Arminell was caught. I'll run and see what is going on, and bring you word."
The old woman unhooked sufficient strands of ivy to support herself, and went lightly and easily along the face of the rock.
Saltren remained standing. He had his hands linked behind his back, and his head projecting. He had not recovered balance of mind; his thoughts were like hares in poachers' gate-nets—entangled, leaping, turning over, and working themselves, in their efforts after freedom, into more inextricable entanglement. But one idea gradually formed itself distinctly in his mind—the idea that he had not been wronged by Lord Lamerton in the way in which he had supposed, and that, therefore, all personal feeling against him disappeared. But, in the confusion of his brain, he carried back this idea to a period before he discovered that he had been deceived by his wife into feeling this grudge, and he justified his action to himself; he satisfied himself that there could have been no private resentment in his conduct to his lordship when he lifted his hand against him, because twenty minutes later he discovered that there were no grounds for entertaining it. This consideration sufficed to dissipate the first sense of guilt that had stolen over him. Now he knelt down in the cave, at its entrance, and thanked heaven that no taint of personal animosity had entered into his motives and marred their purity. It was true that Lord Lamerton had thrown Saltren out of employ—he forgot that. It was true also that, as chairman of the board of directors of the railway, he had sought to force him to surrender his house and plot of land—he forgot that. It was true that at the time when he confronted Lord Lamerton, he believed that his domestic happiness had been destroyed by that nobleman—he forgot that also. He concluded that he had put forth his hand, acting under a divine impulse, and exe-
