The Argosy — page 199: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Master of Greylands. - 183 “ Jack Tuff must have told you that !” “Yes, Jack Tuff did tell it me,” retorted Mrs. Bent. “I stayed at the door looking for you till half-after twelve. Anda tidy state ke was in !—his nose touching the ground, a’most, every step he took!” “Just let me come in, Dorothy. I’ve not stayed out all this while for Pleasure—as you may be sure.” ‘* You’ve stayed for aggravation perhaps ; to a people up. Where’s Mr. Anthony Castlemaine P” q “* He’s come home, isn’t he?” “‘T daresay you know very well whether he is or not,” returned Mrs. Bent from her window. ‘“‘ But, Dorothy woman, it is for him I’@e been waiting. He went into the Friar’s Keep, and he’s never come out again—unless he came when I did not see him.” “The Friar’s Keep!” repeated the landlady, in the most ridiculing tone she could use. ‘‘ What excuse will you invent next ?” “It is mo excuse: it’s true. We saw Mr. Castlemaine go in there, and Mr. Anthony ran over and followed him, saying he’d have out the quarrel under the moonlight. And I stood cooling my heels outside, waiting for him all this while, till I began to think he must have come out and passed me unseen. He Aas come home, has he not?” ‘¢ He 1s zof come home,” said Mrs. Bent. *‘ Well, let the door be opened.” As the story sounded a mysterious one, and Mrs. Bent had her curiosity, and as her husband, moreover, was a staid man, not at all given to this kind of offence in general, she allowed him to come In. He gave her a summary of the story, she wrapped in a warm shawl while she stood to listen to it and to make her comments. Anthony Castlemaine had not come home; she had seen nothing at all of him, or of anybody else, tipsy Jack Tuff excepted. A kind of scared feeling, a presentiment of evil, crept over John Bent. For the first time he began to wonder whether the pistol-shot he had heard had struck the young man, whether the agonised cry was his. He went into Anthony’s bedroom, and saw with his own eyes that It was empty. It was not that he questioned his wife’s word; but he felt confused and doubtful altogether—as though it were not possible that Anthony could be absent in this unaccountable manner. ‘I must go back and look for him, wife.” “You'll take the key with you, then,” said Mrs. Bent; who, for a wonder, did not oppose the proposition: in fact, she thought it nght that he should go. And, back went John Bent to the Friar’s Keep. He did not at all like this solitary walking, lovely though the night was ; he would rather have been asleep in bed. The Grey Nunnery lay steeped in silence and gloom; not a single light shone. from any of its windows : a sure sign that just now there could be no sick inmates COMIC OOOKS. EO in —_)