SEVEN YEARS
This motto was almost the account that the twisted figure, with queer contortions of face, yet delicate feet and hands, and dainty utterance, might have been expected to give, when Anne asked him, "Was it you, really?"
"I--or my double?" he asked. "When?"
She told him, and he seemed amazed.
"So you were there? Well, you shall hear. You know how things stood with me--your mother, my good spirit, dead, my uncle away, my father bent on driving me to utter desperation, and Martha Browning laying her great red hands on me--"
"Oh, sir, she really loved you, and is far wiser and more tolerant than you thought her."
"I know," he smiled grimly. "She buried the huge Scot that was killed in the great smuggling fray under the Protector, with all honours, in our family vault, and had
