CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CURLING.
MUSIC AND POETRY.
THE BELL-RINGER.
EXPERIENCES IN CAMP AND COURT.
SHAMROCK LEAVES.
WOODCOCK GOSSIP.
A TRIUMPH OF ART.
EDITORIAL NOTE.
No. 732. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1878. Price 1½d.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
By JOHN B. HARWOOD, Author of ‘Lady Flavia.’
CHAPTER I.—THREATENED.
‘No, my lord; I do not know him; nor, I think,does any one in the village. But during the fewweeks that I have been at High Tor Churchtown,I have seen him very often indeed.’
The speaker was a young girl, of some twentyyears at most. Her bearing was grave and modest,and her attire scrupulously plain; but there arecases in which sovereign beauty will assert herself,and Ethel Gray, the newly appointed school-mistress,was more than pretty. That slender formand faultless face, the dazzling purity of the complexion,and the lustre of the violet eyes, thatcontrasted so well with the wealth of dark hairsimply braided back from the temples and twistedinto a massive coil—these conferred beauty, if everwoman, since Eve's time, deserved to be calledbeautiful.
It was a bright balmy day in June, and throughthe large window of the school-room, now open,floated the scent of flowers and the hum of bees.Within the room, standing beside the teacher,were two gentlemen; while on each side of thetable stood the children, their wondering eyesfixed upon the visitors. They well knew thekindly face of the gray-haired Earl of Wolverhampton,the elder of the two, whose park-gateswere almost within sight of the school of which hewas patron. But they had never before seen theshrewd rugged features of the middle-aged memberof parliament, the Right Hon. Stephen Hammond,Under-secretary of State, by whom he was accompanied.
Ethel Gray's words had been uttered in replyto an inquiry from the Earl as to a swarthy manof sinister aspect and powerful build who waslounging near the low gate of the school-housegarden.
‘That is not a face,’ said the Earl, thinking ofquarter-sessions, tramps, gipsies, and poachers—‘whichI am pleased to see here among my goodpeople.—What is your opinion, Hammond, of theowner of it?’
‘I think that I had rather not meet him on adark night,’ answered the Under-secretary witha smile. ‘But perhaps, after all, the man is onlysome sailor newly paid off; though he has areckless unpleasant look in any case.’
Perceiving himself to be an object of attentionto the occupants of the school-room window, therough fellow who had been lin