your wife gone off with your best friend said the old man better stay with me � a wife is never worth running after unless she happens to belong to another man and not always then stay where you are misfortunes will happen even in families � particularly i may say in families � and i shall want you to protect me against that s by and by besides you know there are fifty roads to town and rather more to heaven and it is your duty to stay and see that i don t take the wrong turning he added with a smile you spoke last night of something you must tell me before you died said mr looking at his watch in three minutes i shall have left this house probably to fulfil a worse fate than ever an yet said the old man significantly it never story of a sin threatened me � escaped it by death but ive seen some dangerous signs in you � odd that it never occurred to anybody and still the way i found out the old s secret so you ll stay he added sharply or it to the last day of your life farewell then said mr turning on his father a look of which he knew not the strangeness and moving to the door stay cried the old man struggling to rise you are going to your doom but mr did not hear him nor if he had heard would he have returned till the moment that he should find himself face to face with he would be as one in whom the very life itself is suspended as he stood with his foot on the carriage step giving directions that any letters that should arrive for him should be re directed to a confusion made itself heard in the house behind him in the midst of which arose a woman s affected shriek your master is dead said mr calmly tell to make all arrangements for the funeral to take place at then gave the signal to drive on and was gone chapter xi since in the toils of fate thou art enclosed submit if thou brook submission mr arrived in town shortly after twelve next day friday i and proceeded immediately to the story of a sin transaction of one of the most difficult it had ever been his lot to undertake he was expected and shown immediately into the presence of the man whose hand held the scales in which more than one life was trembling and after a quarter of an hour s interview left not waiting for lord who was expected in ten minutes mr had from paris for a special train to be in readiness at one o clock to take him to there being no ordinary one for some hours and as it left the great city behind he threw himself back on the cushions and for the first time absolutely alone since he had received frank s began to think he had neither broken bread nor tasted wine since that time the day before but no signs of fatigue were visible in his face or bearing his brow was still of rock his lips of he looked a man and against fate � a whence her poisoned arrows must glance aside perchance others but never himself presently he rose and began to pace the saloon carriage from end to end action of some kind ever seemed indispensable to this man but all his deeds were as free from hurry his powerful will as little influenced by outward causes as the onward sweep of the is affected by the winds that play around it an enemy had once him to as described by the nurse of everlasting frost con story of a sin v deep the fountains of fire and it was partly perhaps this conviction that beneath an habitual reserve he profound passions that made him the force among men he undoubtedly was once he started and uttered an exclamation it had crossed his mind that even if by chance did not know the truth she might learn it by accident from the newspapers of that day to be sure she rarely read one her companionship with her husband giving her neither inclination nor need to do so he told her all that was worth hearing and passed over the rest being of s opinion who on being pressed hard as to the of s writings said that they were not so as the newspapers as mr approached one or two signs of impatience escaped him but no one who saw him alight would have dreamed that there went a man whose every hope of earthly happiness hung on the issues of the next half hour you have the sir the station master ventured to say when he had recovered from his am not i said mr looking at the man as though he would read his very soul but lord � said the man trembling at his own audacity oh he s coming said mr carelessly � you story of a sin may expect him by the last train and he went his way on foot it s all over with her said the man as he went back to the station and in less than half an hour every soul in and alike knew that all hope for the condemned woman was past mr walked across the fields with his usual firm step and observed one or two instances of neglect that would a sharp rebuke to a tenant on the morrow he noted too the old thorn beneath which loved to sit and the hedge in which at a certain time of the year she never failed to search for moss cups at every step of the way indeed he was reminded of his wife and yet he had no definite thought of her as he went i 