Having opened each package with great care and laid out their contents upon a log near by, the Imp approached the ruined building with signs of the most elaborate caution, and gave three loud, double knocks. Now casting my eyes about, I espied a short, heavy stick, and picking it up, poised it in my hand ready in the event of possible contingencies.

The situation was decidedly unpleasant, I confess, for I expected nothing less then to be engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle within the next few minutes; therefore, I waited in some suspense, straining my eyes to wards the shadows with my fingers clasped tight upon my bludgeon.

Then all at once I saw a shape, ghostly and undefined, flit swiftly from the gloom of the boat-house, and next moment a convict was standing beside the Imp, gaunt and tall and wild-looking in the moonlight. His hideous clothes, stained with mud and the green slime of his hiding-places, hung upon him in tatters, and his eyes, deep-sunken in his pallid face, gleamed with an unnatural brightness as he glanced swiftly about him - a miserable, hunted creature, worn by fatigue, and pinched with want and suffering.

“Did ye get ‘em, sonny?” he inquired, in a hoarse, rasping voice.

“Aye, aye, comrade,” returned the Imp; “all’s well!”

“Bless ye for that, sonny !” he exclaimed, and with the words he fell to upon the food devouring each morsel as it was handed to him with a frightful voracity, while his burning, restless eyes glared about him, never still for a moment.

Now as I noticed his wasted form and shaking limbs, I knew that I could master him with one hand. My weapon slipped from my slackened grasp, but at the sound, slight though it was, he turned and began to run. He had not gone five yards, however, when he tripped and fell, and before he could rise I was standing over him. He lay there at my feet, perfectly still, blinking up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“All right, master,” he said at last; “you’ve got me!” But with the words he suddenly rolled himself towards the river, yet as he struggled to his knees I pinned him down again.

“Oh, sir! you won’t go for to give me up to them?” he panted. “I’ve never done you no wrong. For God’s sake don’t send me back to it again, sir.”

“‘Course not,” cried the Imp, laying his hand upon my arm; “this is only Uncle Dick. He won’t hurt you, will you, Uncle Dick?”

“That depends,” I answered, keeping tight hold of the tattered coat collar. “Tell me, what brings you hanging round here?”

“Used to live up in these parts once, master.”

“Who are you?”

“Convict 49, as broke jail over a week ago an’ would ha’ died but for the little ‘un there,” and he nodded towards the Imp.

The convict, as I say, was a tall, thin fellow, with a cadaverous face lined with suffering, while the hair at his temples was prematurely white. And as I looked at him, it occurred to me that the suffering which had set its mark so deeply upon him was not altogether the grosser anguish of the body. Now for our criminal who can still feel morally there is surely hope. I think so, anyhow! For a long moment there was silence, while I stared into the haggard face below, and the Imp looked from one to the other of us, utterly at a loss.

“I wonder if you ever heard tell of ‘the bye Jarge,’” I said suddenly.

The convict started so violently that the jacket tore in my grasp.

“How - how did ye know - ?” he gasped, and stared at me with dropped jaw.

“I think I know your father.”

“My feyther,” he muttered; “old Jasper - ‘e ain’t dead, then?”

“Not yet,” I answered; “come, get up and I’ll tell you more while you eat.” Mechanically he obeyed, sitting with his glowing eyes fixed upon my face the while I told him of old Jasper’s lapse of memory and present illness.

“Then ‘e don’t remember as I’m a thief an’ convict 49, master?”

“No; he thinks and speaks of you always as a boy and a pattern son.”

The man uttered a strange cry, and flinging himself upon his knees buried his face in his hands.

“Come,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder; “take off those things,” and nodding to the Imp, he immediately began unwrapping Peter’s garments.

“What, master,” cried the convict, starting up, “are you goin’ to let me see ‘im afore you give me up?”

“Yes I nodded; “only be quick? In less than live minutes the tattered prison dress was lying in the bed of the river, and we were making our way along the path towards old Jasper’s cottage.

The convict spoke but once, and that as we reached the cottage gate: “is he very ill, sir?”

“Very ill,” I said. He stood for a moment, inhaling the fragrance of the roses in great breaths, and staring about him; then with an abrupt gesture he opened the little gate, and gliding up the path with his furtive, stealthy footstep knocked at the door. For some half hour the Imp and I strolled to and fro in the moonlight, during which he related to me much about his outlaw and the many “ruses he had employed to get him provision.” How upon one occasion, to escape the watchful eyes of Auntie Lisbeth, he had been compelled to hide a slice of jam-tart in the trousers-pockets, to the detriment of each; how Dorothy had watched him everywhere in the momentary expectation of “something happening;” how Jane and Peter and cook would stand and stare and shake their heads at him because he ate such a lot, “an’ the worst of it was I was aw full’ hungry all the time, you know, Uncle Dick!” This and much more he told me as we waited there in the moonlight.

At last the cottage door opened and the convict came out. He did not join us at once, but remained staring away towards the river, though I saw him jerk his sleeve across his eyes more than once in his furtive, stealthy fashion; but when at last he came up to us his face was firm and resolute.

“Did you see old Jasper?” I asked.

“Yes, sir; I saw him.”

“Is he any better?”

“Much better - he died in my arms, sir. An’ now I’m ready to go back, there’s a police-station in the village.” He stopped suddenly and turned to stare back at the lighted windows of the cottage, and when he spoke again his voice sounded hoarser than ever.

“Thought I’d come back from furrin parts, ‘e did, wi’ my pockets stuffed full o’ gold an’ bank-notes. Called me ‘is bye Jarge, ‘e did!” and again he brushed his cuff across his eyes.

“Masters I don’t know who ye may be, but I’m grateful to ye an’ more than grateful, sir. An’ now I’m ready to go back an’ finish my time.”

“How much longer is that?”

“Three years, sir.”

“And when you come out, what shall you do then?”

“Start all over again, sir; try to get some honest work an’ live straight.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I know I can, sir. Ye see, he died in my arms, called me ‘is bye Jarge, said ‘e were proud of me, ‘e did! A man can begin again an’ live straight an’ square wi’ a memory the like o’ that to ‘elp ‘im.”

“Then why not begin to-night?”

He passed a tremulous hand through his silver hair, and stared at me with incredulous eyes.

“Begin-to-night!” he half whispered.

“I have an old house among the Kentish hop-gardens,” I went on; “no one lives there at present except a care-taker, but it is within the bounds of probability that I may go to stay there - some day. Now the gardens need trimming, and I’m very fond of flowers; do you suppose you could make the place look decent in - say, a month ?”

“Sir,” he said in a strange, broken voice, “you ain’t jokin’ with me, are you?”

“I could pay you a pound a week; what do you say?”

He tried to speak, but his lips quivered, and he turned his back upon us very suddenly. I tore a page from my pocket-book and scrawled a hasty note to my care-taker.

“Here is the address,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. “You will find no difficulty. I will write again to-night. You must of course have money to get there and may need to buy a few necessaries besides; here is your first week’s wages in advance,” and I thrust a sovereign into his hand. He stared down at it with blinking eyes, shuffling awkwardly with his feet, and at that moment his face seemed very worn, and lined, and his hair very grey, yet I had a feeling that I should not regret my quixotic action in the end.

“Sir,” he faltered, “sir, do ye mean - ?” and stopped.

“I mean that to-night ‘the bye Jarge’ has a chance to make a new beginning, a chance to become the man his father always thought he would be. Of course I may be a fool to trust you. That only time will show; but you see I had a great respect for old Jasper. And now that you have the address you’d better go; stay, though, you must have a hat; folks might wonder - take this,” and I handed him my cap.

“Sir, I can’t thank ye now, I never can. It - it won’t come; but - ” with a nervous, awkward gesture he caught my hand suddenly pressed it to his lips, and was gone down the lane.

Thus it was that old Jasper’s “bye Jarge” went out to make a trial of life a second time, and as I watched him striding through the moonlight, his head erect, very different to the shambling creature he had been, it seemed to me that the felon was already ousted by the man.

“I ‘specks he forgot all ‘bout me !” said the Imp disconsolately.

“No,” I answered, shaking my head; “I don’t think he will ever forget you, my Imp.”

“I ‘spose he’s awfull’ fond of you, Uncle Dick?”

“Not that I know of,”

“Then why did he kiss your hand?”

“Oh, well - er - perhaps it is a way he has.”

“He didn’t kiss mine,” said the Imp.

A door opened and closed very softly, and Lisbeth came towards us down the path, whereupon the Imp immediately “took cover” in the ditch.

“He is dead, Dick!” she said as I opened the gate. “He died in his son’s arms - the George he was always talking about. And oh, Dick, he died trying to sing ‘The British Grenadiers.”

“Poor old Jasper!” I said.

“His son was a convict once, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“It was strange that he should come back as he did - just in time; it almost seems like the hand of Providence, doesn’t it, Dick?”

“Yes.” Lisbeth was standing with her elbows upon the gate and her chin in her hands, staring up at the moon, and I saw that her eyes were wet with tears.

“Why, where is your cap ?” she exclaimed when at last she condescended to look at me.

“On the head of an escaped convict,”

I answered.

“Do you mean - “

“The ‘bye Jarge,’” I nodded.

“Oh, Dick!”

“Yes, Lisbeth; it was a ridiculous piece of sentiment I admit. Your 1aw abiding, level-headed citizen would doubtless be highly shocked, not to say scandalised; likewise the Law might get up on its hind legs and kick - quite unpleasantly; but all the same, I did it”

“You were never what one might call - very ‘level-headed,’ were you, Dick?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“And, do you know, I think that is the very reason why I - good gracious! - what is that?” She pointed toward the shadow of the hedge.

“Merely the Imp,” I answered; “but never mind that - tell me what you were going to say - ‘the very reason why you’ - what?”

“Reginald!” said Lisbeth, unheeding my question, “come here, sir!” Very sheepishly the Imp crept forth from the ditch, and coming up beside me, stole his hand into mine, and I put it in my pocket.

“Reginald?” she repeated, looking from one to the other of us with that expression which always renews within me the memory of my boyish misdeeds, “why are you not asleep in bed?”

“‘Cause I had to go an’ feed my outlaw, Auntie Lisbeth.”

“And,” I put in to create a diversion, “incidentally I’ve discovered the secret of his ‘enormous appetite.’ It is explained in three words, to wit, ‘the bye Jarge.”

“Do you mean to say - ” began Lisbeth.

“Fed him regularly twice a day,” I went on, “and nearly famished himself in the doing of it - you remember the dry-bread incident?”

“Imp!” cried Lisbeth; “Imp!” And she had him next moment in her arms.

“But Uncle Dick gave him a whole sovereign, you know,” he began; “an’ - “

“I sent him to a certain house, Lisbeth,” I said, as her eyes met mine; “an old house that stands not far from the village of Down, in Kent, to prune the roses and things. I should like it to be looking its best when we get there; and - “

“An’ my outlaw kissed Uncle Dick’s hand,” pursued the Imp. “Don’t you think he must love him an awful lot?”

“I gave him a month to do it in,” I went on; “but a month seems much too long when one comes to consider - what do you think, Lisbeth?”

“I think that I hear the wheels of the dog-cart!” she cried. Sure enough, a moment later Peter hove in view, and great was his astonishment at sight of “Master Reginald.”