The Argosy — page 221: what you’re looking at

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

204 Up on the Moor. ours. And now, sir, I'll wish you a good night’s rest, for it’s past twelve o’clock.” A Bond Street lounger wearied in the search for a new sensation might perhaps have envied Mr. Fairburn next morning when he found himself ushered by Inspector Fox himself into the presence of the half-dozen Squires and Rectors who formed the A—— tribunal of justice, but I do not think anyone else would have done so. He says himself that, in spite of ‘‘ Sartor ” and its lessons, never till that day had he properly realised the moral importance of a suit of clothes. He maintains that it took all his courage to resist the impulse which prompted him to shuffle his feet and hang his head under the stern gaze of six pairs of magisterial eyes, and declares that even his h’s seemed to take to themselves wings and fly away as he told his plain, unvarnished tale. Fortunately the penance was not a long one. Before the story was well over, a rosy old gentleman, Squire Norton by name, suddenly interrupted it. ‘‘Why, bless my soul! then this must be the young fellow Bob Hilliard was talking about at dinner last night! He said Tom Carew and his father were both nearly out of their wits, and dragging every peat-hole for ten miles round ‘T——.” ‘But why in the name of wonder didn’t they look for me on dry ground first ?” interposed the prisoner. ‘““ Because some shepherd who has a hut over on that side of the moor told a tale about having met a man in grey, with a gun on his shoulder, just before daylight ; so they jumped to the conclusion that, dead or alive, you were bound to turn up somewhere in that direction.” ‘And no doubt he did meet a ‘man in grey,’ only it happened to be ‘ Black Jan’ on his way across country !” ‘“That’s it! The rascal wouldn’t dare to make for the station here at A—-— for fear of awkward results. Well now, Mr. Fairburn, the best thing I can do is to drive home and get you a rig-out of my son’s, and then we'll get over to Coombe as quickly as we can, for you'll be a sight for sore eyes there, I can tell you; bright ones, too, some of them. Bob said Miss Madge was on horseback all day yesterday, scouring the moor in search of somebody.” Perhaps the most wonderful part of all this ¢vwe history lies in the fact that Miss Madge Carew successfully accomplished what it has been often declared is beyond the power of woman to do—she con- quered the feminine impulse to utter the words, “I told you so.” This extraordinary self-restraint, combined with her frank and undisguised delight at the wanderer’s safe return, so touched the susceptible heart of the young laird that there 1s every reason to expect before next summer the skill of the Coombe Burleigh ringers and the stability of the ancient church tower will both be tested by demands for a wedding-peal worthy of the Squire’s eldest daughter. JESSIE LEETE. CONMICLOOOKS.€©)