The Cotton Factory Times. — 1887-10-21 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

CHAPTER 11.  As the day declines, the servants of Dunfordle House assemble, after their easy labours, to amuse themselves as usual with gossiping. There is old Robert Grindley, the male servant, and William Thomson, the gardener; Mrs. Ross, the housekeeper; and Ann Dilston, Mrs. Lennox's maid; Bunsley, the cook; and Tinney, the kitchenmaid— to none of whom much is given, and of none of whom much is required. Entirely ignorant of what had befallen their mistress, they nevertheless begin to feel anxious about her. The unhappy life she leads, and the coming of an heir, are topics of fruitful comment. Grindley, the old butler, becomes rather communicative, and asserts in the hearing of the whole company that, be the heir male or female, Randolph Lennox's spendthrift career will be cut short by the property being "tied up." Grindley has known Lennox to be from his youth a scapegrace. Designed to induce him to settle down in life, his marriage had had little effect upon him- Two months after the event, he is said to have been seen " stravaging the country we a band o' gipsies." While these important revelations are being made, Watty Sly, a travelling packman, enters the house, and rouses the interest of the company by stating that he has seen the mistress of Dunfordle in the flawkheugh Wood. To verify the packman's assertion, all the rooms in the house are searched, but Mrs. Lennox is not there. Great is the consternation; wild and ominous are the surmises. All night through the woods are searched without avail. The opinion prevails in the morning that only two more limited searches need be made, —in the Earn, and in the dark, unfathomable Kelpies Bole. Still darker the surmises of the butler and the gardener. They think Randolph Lennox may done away with his own wife, to prevent the coming o' the bairn." Mr. Batten, the lawyer, is summoned from Perth. Borthwick, the factor on the estate, is despatched to find out Lennox at an English race meeting. Whilst evil tongues are freely declaring him to be a murderer, the young master is found. No one could be more shocked and concerned than he is at the news. Although selfish, dissipated, and heartless, he is yet incapable of such a crime at that which is attributed to him. He has become a villain more by impulse than by calculation. The tidings he receives throw over his career an illuminating glare, revealing to him the enormity of the vicious course he is pursuing. He quite the heat and excitement of the racecourse, and retnrns to Dunfordle, shuddering to think what may have been his wife's fate. Though the search has long since been given up. be scours the woods and seclusions of the district, like a haunted spirit, shunned by all. A mouth passes thus, and one day, in returning home at gloaming through the woods, he heard a child's cry, which seems to come from the path below where he walks. Passing down the slope, he hears the cry again, pushes aside some branches, approaches a narrow road, at the bend of which he meets face to face a woman—his own wife—bent and drooping through weakness. She carries a child. Recognising her husband, Mrs. Lennox utters his name and then falls fainting into his arms.