The Argosy — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

186 The Mystery of Allan Grale. that he did, but he would have his own way. I think he had some- thing in it that he was taking somewhere else.” ‘He had nothing in it from me,” returned Mrs. Grale. ‘I expect he just brought it away to save you trouble, Kate, and then set it down anywhere instead of putting it back in its right place.” They chatted for a while, and then drove home. There they found a few letters lying on the hall table awaiting them. One was for Allan. Mary Anne did not know the writing, but she casually took it up and © looked at it. The envelope bore the stamped seal of the Carstow Cricket Club, of which Allan was a member. “ Only some circular or notice from the club,” thought she, carelessly. How could she imagine that Allan might have a correspondent whom he kept regularly supplied with these innocent-looking envelopes of the club? Allan might be in a strait just now, but somebody else was in it also, and their communications with one another had to be jealously guarded from suspicion. ‘That such ways are not the ways of wisdom or of pleasantness, and do not lead to peace, might have been seen on Allan’s face had anybody been watching him when he took up that harmless-looking letter. But he thrust it into his pocket ; it could only be read in the solitude of his own room. At dinner Mrs. Grale forgot all about the basket, her attention having been turned to other things; but in the evening, when her thoughts reverted to their usual domestic grooves, she remembered it. _ “ Where is that hamper you took to old Kate’s, Alny ?” she asked suddenly. Allan started from a gloomy reverie. He had meant to fetch that hamper from its singular hiding place before this, but somehow had not yet done it. Nurse Kate’s cottage was so near the Court, that going there might mean encountering Miss Vivian—and Maria, the one woman in all the world whom he had ever loved, was now the one woman whom he shrank from holding an interview. with. ‘“Tll see that you get the hamper to-morrow, mother,” he said. “Tell me where you’ve put it,” persisted Mrs. Grale, “or you'll forget all about it, and I shall never see it again. Kate says you took it away.” Allan gave a light laugh. “ Well, I know I did,” he admitted. “*T called in at one or two places afterwards—so I can’t tell quite certainly where it is, but you shall have it again, never fear.” “That's the way things get lost,” said Mrs. Grale, plaintively. “* And our name is not on it—only a G, which might as well stand for Gordon at the shop, or for Gray the station-master. ‘The sooner you look after it, the better.” “Tl go at once,” said Allan, rising with alacrity. He felt suddenly uneasy about that hamper. Suppose somebody else found it among the ferns, and suppose it found its way back thence to his mother ? How should he explain its being there ? ‘““T did not mean that you need be in quite such a hurry,” observed CONNIE OOOKS (E()