when she lifted up her face and looked at him with tearful eyes; "if it killed me I must do it. But it is a hard thing you bid me do, Phebe."
He turned away to brush the last speck of dust from the eagle's wings, and lifting it up carefully carried it away to pack in his wagon, Phebe holding the lantern for him till all was done. Then hand in hand they walked down the foot-worn path across the field to the house, as they had done ever since she had been a tottering little child, hardly able to clasp his one finger with her baby hand.
Roland Sefton was crouching over the dying embers on the hearth, more in the utter misery of soul than in bodily chilliness, though he felt cold and shivering, as if stripped of all that made life desirable to him. There is no icy chill like that. He did not look round when the door opened, though Phebe spoke to him; for he could not face old Marlowe, or force himself to read the silent yet eloquent fingers, which only could utter words of reproach. The dumb old man stood on the threshold, gazing at his averted face and downcast head, and an inarticulate cry of mingled rage and grief broke from his silent lips, such as Phebe herself had never heard before, and which, years afterward, sounded at times in Roland Sefton's ears.
It was nearly ten o'clock before they were on the road, old Marlowe marching at the head of his horse, and Phebe mounted on her wiry little pony, while Roland Sefton rode in front of the wagon at times. Their progress was slow, for the oak furniture was heavy and the roads were rough, leading across the moor and down steep hills into valleys, with equally steep hills on the other side. The sky was covered with a thin mist drifting slowly before the wind, and when the moon shone through it, about two o'clock in the morning, it was the waning-moon looking sad and forlorn amid the floating vapor. The houses they passed were few and far between, showing no light or sign of life. All the land lay around them dark and desolate under the midnight sky; and the slow creaking of the wheels and sluggish hoof-beats of the horse dragging the wagon were the only sounds that broke the stillness.
In this gloom old Marlowe could hold no conversation either with Phebe or Roland Sefton, but from time to time they could hear him sob aloud as he trudged on in his speechless isolation. It was a sad sound, which pierced them to the heart. From time to time Roland Sefton walked up the long hills beside Phebe's pony, pouring out his whole heart to her. They could hardly see each other's faces in the dimness, and words came the more readily to him. All the burden of his confession was that he had fallen through seeking Felicita's happiness. For her sake he had longed for more wealth, and speculated in the hope of gaining it, and tampered with the securities intrusted to him in the hope of retrieving losses. It was for her, and her only, he maintained; and now he had brought infamy and wretchedness and poverty upon her and his innocent children.
"Would to God I could die to-night!" he exclaimed; "my death would save them from some portion of their trouble."
Phebe listened to him almost as heart-broken as himself. In her singularly solitary life, so far apart from ordinary human society, she had never been brought into contact with sin, and its profound, fathomless misery; and now it was the one friend, whom she had loved the longest and the best, who was walking beside her a guilty man, fleeing through the night from all he himself cared for, to seek a refuge from the consequences of his crime in an uncertain exile. In years afterward it seemed to her as if that night had been rather a terrible dream than a reality.
At length the pale dawn broke, and the utter separation caused by the darkness between them and old Marlowe passed away with it. He stopped his horse and came to them, turning a gray, despairing face upon Roland Sefton.
"It is time to leave you," he said; "over these fields lies the nearest station, where you can escape from a just punishment. You have made us beggars to keep up your own grandeur. God will see that you do not go unpunished."
"Hush, hush!" cried Phebe aloud, stretching out her hand to Roland Sefton; "he will forgive you by and by. Tell me: have you no message to send by me, sir? When shall we hear from you?"
"If I get away safe," he answered, in a broken voice, "and if nothing is heard of me before, tell Felicita I will be in the place where I saw her first, this day six months. Do not tell her till the time is near. It will be best for her to know nothing of me at present."
They were standing at the stile over which his road lay. The sun was not yet risen, but the gray clouds overhead were taking rosy and golden tints. Here and there in the quiet farmsteads around them the cocks were beginning to crow lazily; and there were low, drowsy twitterings in the hedges, where the nests were still new little homes. It was a more peaceful hour than sunset can ever be with its memories of the day's toils and troubles. All the world seemed bathed in rest and quietness except themselves. Their dark journey through the silent night had been almost a crime.
"Your father turns his back upon me, as all honest men will do," said Roland Sefton.
Old Marlowe had gone back to his horse, and stood there without looking round. The tears ran down Phebe's face; but she did not touch her father, and ask him to bid his old friend's son good-by.
"Some day no man will turn his back upon you, sir," she answered; "I would die now rather than do it. You will regain your good name some day."
"Never!" he exclaimed; "it is past recall. There is no place of repentance for me, Phebe. I have staked all, and lost all."
CHAPTER VI.
THE OLD BANK.
About the same hour that Roland Sefton set off under shelter of old Marlowe's wagon to attempt his escape, Mr. Clifford, the senior partner in the firm, reached Riversborough by the last train from London. It was too late for him to intrude on the household of his young partner, and he spent the night at a hotel.
The old bank at Riversborough had been flourishing for the last hundred years. It had the power of issuing its own notes; and until lately these notes, bearing the familiar names of Clifford and Sefton, had been preferred by the country people round to those of the Bank of England itself. For nobody knew who were the managers of the Bank of England; while one of the Seftons, either father or son, could be seen at any time for the last fifty years. On ordinary days there were but few customers to be seen in its handsome office, and a single clerk might easily have transacted all the business. But on market-days and fair-days the place was crowded by loud-voiced, red-faced country gentlemen, and by awkward and burly farmers, from the moment its doors were opened until they were closed at the last stroke of four sounding from the church clock near at hand. The strong room of the Old Bank was filled full with chests containing valuable securities and heirlooms, belonging to most of the county families in the neighborhood.
For the last twenty years Mr. Clifford had left the management of the bank entirely to the elder Sefton, and upon his death to his son, who was already a partner. He had lived abroad, and had not visited England for more than ten years. There was a report, somewhat more circumstantial than a rumor, but the truth of which none but the elder Sefton had ever known, that Mr. Clifford, offended by his only son, had let him die of absolute starvation in Paris. Added to this rumor was a vague story of some crime committed by the younger Clifford, which his father would not overlook or forgive. That he was a hard man, austere to utter pitilessness, everybody averred. No transgressor need look to him for pardon.
When Roland Sefton had laid his hands upon the private personal securities belonging to his senior partner, it was with no idea that he would escape
