Ring, ring, ring! broke forth the chimes melodiously upon Hubert's ear.
"Stop!" he shouted, panting; "stop! stop!"--just as if John Cale could
hear the warning: and he began leaping over all the gravestones in his
path, after the irreverent fashion of Miss Kate Dancox.

"Stop!" he faintly cried in his exhaustion, dashing through the vestry,
as the strains of "The Bay of Biscay" pursued their harmonious course
overhead, sounding louder here than in the open air. "Sto--"

He could not finish the word. Pulling the little door open, he put his
foot on the first step of the narrow ladder of a staircase: and then
fell prone upon it. John Cale and young Mr. Threpp, the churchwarden's
son, who had been the clerk's companion, were descending the stairs,
after the chimes had chimed themselves out, and they had locked them up
again to (perhaps) another year, when they found some impediment below.

"What is it?" exclaimed young Mr. Threpp. The clerk turned on his
lantern.

It was Hubert, Captain Monk's son and heir. He lay there with a face of
deadly whiteness, a blue shade encircling his lips.

JOHNNY LUDLOW.




WINTER IN ABSENCE.