The Moon Rock

of the woman who had just been buried. Her husband had regarded her as a drag upon him, and did not consider her removal an occasion for the display of hyp

st and pride. It may be a famous son, a renowned ancestor, a faded heirloom, even a musical daughter. The pride of the Turold family rested on

d more than that. As a boy he had pored over the crabbed parchments in the family deed-box which indicated but did not record the family descent, an

Money, and a great deal of it, was needed for the search, in the first instance, of the unbroken line of descent, and for the maintenance of the title afterwards if the claim w

ared-a saturnine silent man-as suddenly as he had gone away. In his wanderings he had gained a fortune but partly lost the use of one eye. The partial loss of a

im two girls. The first died in infancy, and some years later Sisily was born. His regrets increased with the birth of a second daughter. He wanted a son to succeed him in the title-when he gained it. Time passed, and he became enraged. His anger crushed the timid woman who shared his strange lot. His dominating tem

he learnt that a fortune and a title were at stake. The sister and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton, had reached Cornwall two days before the funeral. They were to take Sisily back to London with them. It was Robert Turold's intention to part with his daughter and place her in his sister's charge. For a reason he

ife so harshly. She had been the witness of it all-from her earliest childhood to the moment when the unhappy woman had died with her eyes fixed on he

etness of the room. The representatives of the family eyed one another with guarded indiffer

ed-tiled roof, one of a streetful similarly afflicted, where she kept two maids and had a weekly reception day. She was childless, but she disdained to carry a pet dog as compensation for barrenness. Her husband was a meagre shrimp of a stockbroker

ne there more than twenty years before to fill a Government post, taking with him his young wife, but leaving his son at school in England for some years. His wife had languished and died beneath an Indian sun, but her husband had become acclimatized, and remained until his time was up and he was free to return to England with a pension. His sister and he met on the previous day for the first time since he

ho practised in the churchtown where Mrs. Turold h

mmenced soon after the latter's arrival in Cornwall. The claimant for a title had found in the churchtown doctor an antiquarian after his own h

was mingled with white, and the heavy moustache which drooped over his mouth was quite white. He presented a common-place figure in his rough worn tweeds and heavy boots, but he was a man of intelligence in spite of his unassuming exterior. He lived alone, cared for by a single servant, and h

of his white hands, the inflection of his voice, the double eyeglass which dangled from his vest by a ribbon of black silk, revealed the type of human being which considers itself something rarer and finer than its fellows. The thin face, narrow white forehead, and high-bridged nose might have belonged to an Oxford don or fashionable preacher, but, apart from these features, Austin Turold had

panion. His son was still staring out of the window. The little stockbroker, seated on the sofa beside his large wife, made

"let me give you

to visit before dark," he said, "a lady. I do not c

avenshaw," persisted the other. "W

. Pendleton sounded from t

tin, pausing in the act of po

y improper to drink a t

matter with

ten years before her death, but she had no difficulty in bringing tears to her eyes at the recollection o

tin drained his glass, and Dr. Ravenshaw adjusted