Loved him--ay, loved him even so. Loved him, and the more
she loved him, the more utterly loathed him. If it had been any lesser or lower man, she might have forgiven him. But
_him_--Harry--it was too unspeakable. Creeping along the passage to the library door, she paused and listened. Inside, there was a noise of footsteps, pacing up and down the room
hurriedly. He had come to himself, then! He had slept off his drunken
helplessness! She paused and listened again to hear further. Harry was stalking to and fro across the floor with fiery eagerness,
sobbing bitterly to himself, and pausing every now and then with a sort
of sudden spasmodic hesitation. From time to time she heard him mutter
aloud, "She must have seen me! She must have seen me! They will tell
her, they will tell her! Oh, God! they will tell her!" Should she unlock the door, and fling herself wildly into his arms? Her
instinct told her to do it, but she faltered and hesitated. A drunkard! a drunkard! Oh no! she could not. The evil genius conquered the good,
and she checked the impulse that alone could have saved her. She crept up again, with heart standing still and failing within her,
and flung herself once more upon her own bed. Two o'clock. Three. Half-past three. A quarter to four. How long the night seems when you are watching and weeping! Suddenly, at the quarter-hour just gone, a sharp ring at a bell
disturbed her lethargy--a ring two or three times repeated, which waked
the butler from his sound slumber. Edie walked out cautiously to the top of the stairs and listened. The
butler stood at the library door and knocked in vain. Edie heard a
letter pushed under the door, and in a muffled voice heard Harry saying,
"Give that letter to your mistress, Hardy--to-morrow morning." A vague foreboding of evil overcame her. She stole down the stairs in
the blank dark and took the letter without a word from the half-dressed
and wondering butler. Then she glided back to her own room, sat down
eagerly by the dressing-table, and began to read it. "EDIE,

     "This is the third time, and I determined with myself that the
     third time should be the last one. Once in London; once at
     Hereford; once now. I can stand it no longer. My father died a
     drunkard. My mother died a drunkard. I cannot resist the
     temptation. It is better I should not stop here. I have tried hard,
     but I am beaten in the struggle. I loved you dearly: I love you
     still far too much to burden your life by my miserable presence. I
     have left you everything. Evan will make you happier than I could. Forgive me. "HARRY." She dropped the letter with a scream, and almost would have fainted. But even before the faintness could wholly overcome her, another sound
rang out sharper and clearer far from the room below her. It brought her
back to herself immediately. It was the report of a pistol. Edie and the butler hurried back in breathless suspense to the library
door. It was locked still. Edie took the key from her pocket and turned
it quickly. When they entered, the candles on the mantelpiece were
burning brightly, and Harry Lewin's body, shot through the heart, lay in
a pool of gurgling blood right across the spattered hearthrug. _THE GOLD WULFRIC._


PART I.

I. There are only two gold coins of Wulfric of Mercia in existence
anywhere. One of them is in the British Museum, and the other one is in
my possession. The most terrible incident in the whole course of my career is
intimately connected with my first discovery of that gold Wulfric. It is
not too much to say that my entire life has been deeply coloured by it,
and I shall make no apology therefore for narrating the story in some
little detail. I was stopping down at Lichfield for my summer holiday in
July, 1879, when I happened one day accidentally to meet an old
ploughman who told me he had got a lot of coins at home that he had
ploughed up on what he called the "field of battle," a place I had
already recognized as the site of the Mercian kings' wooden palace. I went home with him at once in high glee, for I have been a collector
of old English gold and silver coinage for several years, and I was in
hopes that my friendly ploughman's find might contain something good in
the way of Anglo-Saxon pennies or shillings, considering the very
promising place in which he had unearthed it. As it turned out, I was not mistaken. The little hoard, concealed within
a rude piece of Anglo-Saxon pottery (now No. 127 in case LIX. at the
South Kensington Museum), comprised a large number of common Frankish
Merovingian coins (I beg Mr. Freeman's pardon for not calling them
Merwings), together with two or three Kentish pennies of some rarity
from the mints of Ethelbert at Canterbury and Dover. Amongst these minor
treasures, however, my eye at once fell upon a single gold piece,
obviously imitated from the imperial Roman aureus of the pretender
Carausius, which I saw immediately must be an almost unique bit of money
of the very greatest numismatic interest. I took it up and examined it
carefully. A minute's inspection fully satisfied me that it was indeed a
genuine mintage of Wulfric of Mercia, the like of which I had never
before to my knowledge set eyes upon. I immediately offered the old man five pounds down for the whole
collection. He closed with the offer forthwith in the most contented
fashion, and I bought them and paid for them all upon the spot without
further parley. When I got back to my lodgings that evening I could do nothing but look
at my gold Wulfric. I was charmed and delighted at the actual possession
of so great a treasure, and was burning to take it up at once to the
British Museum to see whether even in the national collection they had
got another like it. So being by nature of an enthusiastic and impulsive
disposition, I determined to go up to town the very next day, and try to
track down the history of my Wulfric. "It'll be a good opportunity," I
said to myself, "to kill two birds with one stone. Emily's people
haven't gone out of town yet. I can call there in the morning, arrange
to go to the theatre with them at night, and then drive at once to the
Museum and see how much my find is worth." Next morning I was off to town by an early train, and before one o'clock
I had got to Emily's. "Why, Harold," she cried, running down to meet me and kiss me in the
passage (for she had seen me get out of my hansom from the drawing-room
window), "how on earth is it that you're up in town to-day? I thought
you were down at Lichfield still with your Oxford reading party." "So I am," I answered, "officially at Lichfield; but I've come up to-day
partly to see you, and partly on a piece of business about a new coin
I've just got hold of." "A coin!" Emily answered, pretending to pout. "Me and a coin! That's how
you link us together mentally, is it? I declare, Harold, I shall be
getting jealous of those coins of yours some day, I'm certain.