CHAPTER IV.

Earthly Hope.

THE sun's red rim had just sunk over the common; evening would soon close in, nothing had been found, save that one little scrap, which could possibly help even a keen lawyer in finding a clue. The strangers rose to depart, sorry to have had their trouble for nothing; the boys were quaking at thoughts of what would follow after the gentlemen had left; for a thunder cloud of gloom had gathered on the face of their father, and the children could read that face too well to expect to escape a storm.

May was standing close by Amy's chair, when, after a severe fit of coughing, her sister bent down towards her and whispered, "May, I have just thought of something; is not my pillow stuffed with paper?"

"Oh! Please—please don't say nothing about it!" was the anxious whispered reply, "Father will whack me well for tearing it up into such little bits."

"I will try not to bring you into trouble; but I think that we ought to tell father," said Amy.

Mr. Garway had risen, and was putting on his hat, as he turned to nod a kindly good-bye to the sick young girl. Amy, with a painful effort, drew the pillow from under her head and said faintly, "Perhaps this had better be looked at, it is stuffed with pieces of paper."

"Why did you not tell that before?" exclaimed Mytton with anger.

And in a moment, his rough hand had torn up poor May's work from the top to the bottom, and scattered its contents in a little heap on the table.

"Plenty of fragments of old manuscripts here," said Garway, whose quick eye instantly detected the yellowish hue and the peculiar fabric of many of the morsels of paper.

"Ah! I should not wonder if this matched our three-cornered bit," cried Sharp, pouncing upon a tiny piece which held but three letters, "mar." He placed the two fragments together, they fitted exactly.

Mytton uttered an exclamation of triumph.

"We must carefully search over all these bits of paper," observed Garway, "and fit in the fragments, if we can, like pieces of a dissected map. But this tedious work will take hours, if not days, and we have already been here for a considerable time. We will take away this heap of little scraps, and pursue the occupation at our leisure."

"I beg your pardon, genl'men, but not one bit of paper shall go out of this cottage!" cried Mytton, to whom it seemed as if the fortunes of himself and his family had all been sewn up in that pillow. "Search here till doomsday, if you like it, but I'll not have a scrap of that there heap taken out of my sight."

Expostulation was in vain; the hewer of wood, feverish with ambitious hopes, would not trust his treasure to the care of the lawyers. The hunt for yellowish scraps, which were carefully collected and put together, went on till darkness closed in, and then the lawyers re-entered their conveyance, and drove off to take their dinner at the nearest inn, promising to return in an hour.

During the time of their absence, Mytton, never so much as raising his eyes from his occupation, went on as if life depended on success, setting one little scrap by another, and muttering savage words, which made Amy's blood run cold, about the folly which had torn into fragments that which might be of such priceless value. It was well for the children that Mytton was too busy with his heap of small scraps, to vent his anger in anything but words.

It was nearly two hours before the lawyers returned, and there they found Mytton, just where they had left him, bending over the table, and anxiously examining the stuffing of Mary's pillow by the dull light of a tallow dip. The children had all gone to bed, for Amy's cough had irritated her father, whose nerves were painfully on the strain. And May, after many a long, weary yawn, having fallen asleep on the floor, had been roughly wakened, and sent upstairs.

The lawyers brought clearer light and sharper intelligence to the work before them, which was pursued till far into the night. With the help of a little paste, all the scraps which could be made to fit into each other were arranged into something like order. At last, nearly half of the flyleaf of the family Bible, with its record in different handwritings of births, marriages, and deaths, stretching over more than a hundred and fifty years, was patched together—the rest of the leaf had been irrecoverably lost.

The lawyers left the cottage weary and sleepy; Mytton went to his pallet bed, weary, indeed, but so restless that he could not close an eye till the dawn. It seemed almost as if the labouring man were never again to enjoy a night of sound rest.

A lawsuit was commenced regarding the succession to the Mytton estate, which, for month after month, dragged its slow length along. Other evidence besides the mutilated fly leaf, but partly collected through clues which it gave, was brought forward in courts of law. Mytton awaited the conclusion of the suit with a restless impatience which deprived him of appetite and sleep. Daily labour to earn a scanty subsistence became intolerable to a man who hoped to find himself the possessor of several thousands a year.

Mytton and his family almost starved while awaiting the wealth which would, perhaps, never be theirs. Mytton twice sold part of the scanty furniture of his home to scrape up money to take him to London, to watch the progress of his suit. The very flesh wasted from his bones, the poor man grew haggard and wan, and his temper more savage than ever. From morning till night he could think of, speak of nothing but the inheritance which he hoped for, and the same theme haunted his dreams. And this was a man who had had placed within his reach a heavenly inheritance beyond all price, yet who had scarcely given it a thought! A man who had had in the Scriptures the very title deeds, as it were, of that inheritance, and yet had not taken the trouble to read them.

Stands he alone in his folly?