they've a lodger, you know, sir," he said, turning partly towards Mr. Rhys, "I dare say you've seen him-he's always wandering about

we often wish he knew you, for he's constantly grumbling about not being able to get at any books here."

"I don't wonder at it, poor fellow--who is he, Hugh ?”

"A Mr. Rymer."

Rymer," echoed the antiquary, half carelessly, half musingly, "it's familiar, somehow, yet I'm sure I don't know any man with such a name."

"To say the truth, sir, Kezia and I don't think it is his real name," said Hugh.

"I can't think how it is I seem to know it, Catherine," he said, his whole face and voice changing to a strange tenderness as he uttered her name, and turned towards her.

But having turned, he stood still as stone.

She knew how bloodless her lips and cheeks had become, but as he turned she did not think he could know what had brought this deadly faintness over her-she expected some

cry of surprise-fear-solicitude, but still felt that he was looking and was silent. Did he remember Cunliff's second name? It was written in a book he had given her when they first knew each other, and that book she had sent, with others, to her husband, when he was in Italy. Could it be that he remembered it?

Hugh, watching them, thought Mr. Rhys must be paralysed with grief or fear at his wife's sudden illness, and seeing him so motionless, said

"What shall I do, sir? Shall I ring? I have noticed Mrs. Rhys growing so pale, but I did not know she was ill.”

"I am better-I think the room is close," came in a laboured whisper from the white lips.

"Well, good morning, Hugh, I wish you all prosperity," said Mr. Rhys, in a cold forced voice.

"Good bye, sir, thank you for all your kindness."

So Hugh passed out of the room where he had spent so many delightful hours, laying

down on a bookshelf, as he went by it, the little purse Mrs. Rhys had given him.

When Catherine felt she was alone with her husband her deadly faintness came back she closed her eyes and did not open them till the sharp shutting of the door made her spring to her feet, with a suppressed

cry.

He had gone away!

She went to the door, then to the window, with a sort of weak, wild, hopeless, impetuosity.

Near the window was a cast of a curious old cross-in which she had taken an interest when she had first seen this room a year ago. It was from the "Maen Achwynfan," or "Stone of Lamentation,” near Whitford. She had heard from her husband how penances were finished there, and how tears of contrition and humiliation were shed there in olden times; earlier even than the ninth century.

As she faced it now in her inexpressible terror and anguish, she wondered whether the many burthened souls who had sought relief at its foot, had found what they

sought. And then, without waiting to conjecture yes or no, she sank down herself before it with a cry as bitter as any pilgrim penitent that ever sought it could have uttered.

CHAPTER V.

A VISITOR AT THE ABBEY FARM.

It was fair-day at Dolgarrog, and William Chidlaw, the young master of the abbey farm, had gone there with two of his men; and the abbey farm yard, in consequence, was shut in by its great gates, and was so quiet and sunny that the Reverend Daniel Lloyd found it a pleasanter study than his damp little parlour, or the great refectory where his boys were buzzing over their lessons.

He was pacing slowly up and down, from the refectory door to the nail-studded doors of the ruined chapel, when the yard dog woke and began to growl, looking menacingly towards the stile.

Mr. Lloyd glanced absently in the same direction.

The intruder was Mr. Rhys of Dola' Hudol.

VOL. II.

7