CHAPTER XI.

But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me-stay, illusion;
If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me !

Shakespeare.

'VERY foolish,' said Lawyer Noland, as Sir Charles Fairland related to him, almost immediately after it had taken place, the particulars of this stormy interview with Graves. Very foolish, indeed, on your part, to let your angry passions thus run away with you. My dear boy, you should have preserved the utmost calmness with Graves; you should have been civil to him. I fear that by your vehemence—even as you tell me was the case with your poor father in his scheme to detect Graves-I fear you will spoil all, spoil the snare that I am spreading to catch the villain; and that he may be off, instead of walking into it. My plot works capitally; I have

my men on the look-out everywhere. The revenue officers are also in my interest; they hate Graves for having certainly protected some of those desperate smugglers, and, as it is reported, for having supplied them with powder and shot to make that bold stand when one of the revenue men was killed the other day in the fray on the beach.* Strong motives must a man of Mr. Graves' position and expectations have-for all men say he boasts that he is to marry your Lady Fairland-strong must be his motives for protecting a gang of smugglers so desperate as these; but more of this anon. That escritoire must be moved to-night. I must have the searching of that myself, with your leave.'

'I fear Graves will gain possession of it,' replied Sir Charles. 'I am most desirous that it should be searched by you. How must it be moved?'

'I will tell you,' said Noland; 'I will send one of my own people; he shall go for it with my

* At the date of this tale the nefarious traffic of smuggling was carried on, both on the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, with the most extraordinary daring.

cart. That will take Graves by surprise, and Tom Wakeum can help to remove it. No time must be lost; for, like you, I think there is something suspicious in Graves so insisting on retaining it, and your father's anxiety to come at it in his dying moments confirms the suspicion. There must be something of vast importance connected with that old escritoire.'

'Yet I can assure you,' replied Sir Charles, 'that except the five hundred pounds, which the coroner handed over to the executors after the inquest, there was nothing of any value in it.'

'Nevertheless,' said Mr. Noland, 'I advise its being secured and searched. I will give orders about it forthwith; the men and the cart shall go off for it directly. The portraits are all safely arrived; a goodly set of grandfathers. Come with me, my dear fellow, and I'll show you where I've stowed them; and then you shall go with me to my closet, where I will lay before you some notes that I have made of this affair of the smugglers-they contain a few curious discoveries; and the plan I have drawn out for our

further proceedings; that is, unless you have marred all by this foolish quarrel, and, as I said but now, the scoundrel sets off before I can catch him. But, after all, I think the bait up at the Abbey-the widow and the gold-is too strong to be lost sight of by such a shark.'

'I know not what to think,' said Sir Charles, musing, as if engaged more with his own thoughts than with the plans of his friend.

'What to think!' said the lawyer, taking up his last words in a cheerful tone; 'why, Sir Charles, always think the best and hope the best. But come, cheer up; you are in low spirits. Never mind the dark hour of fortune; it will be bright by-and-by. You must stay and cut your mutton with me to-day; a delicate leg of Okehampton with a bottle of old Tokay to give it a relish, and we will drink a health to the fair Miss Isabella and better times to us all. I shall never forget the day when I first heard of your being thought of before you were born from the lips of your poor distressed mother, and how on that day I helped to make the peace and to prevent a

separation. But now do I earnestly hope I may, at last, effect a divorce between your father's lands and his second wife's children. But no more of this now; come along with me. I have hope. But if all goes wrong, and things come to the worst, we must even take patience to help us.'

So saying, Mr. Noland led the way. Long and deep was the conference. Sir Charles and his adviser were closeted for more than three hours, and finally called in to their counsels a very intelligent officer of the revenue, who was to play an important part in their proposed measures. In the interval we will, in a few words, tell the result of Mr. Noland's scheme for the removal of the escritoire.

A rascally footman, a well-paid tool of Graves, soon made his master acquainted with the arrival of a cart and only one man with it, who with the assistance of Tom Wakeum had placed the escritoire safe in the same cart, adding that Tom had afterwards set off with a letter which Sir Charles strictly charged him to deliver himself into the hands of Miss Fitzwarren.